


Antagonism, Affection, and Apathy

by FrillyPinkUmbrella



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark, Established Relationship, First War with Voldemort, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Jealousy, M/M, MWPP, Minor Character Death, OotP, Post-Hogwarts, prongsfoot - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2020-01-16 17:48:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 58,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18526540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrillyPinkUmbrella/pseuds/FrillyPinkUmbrella
Summary: Any relationship is difficult, but it's rather hard to love someone and continue loving them when there's a war going on, and people are dying everywhere, and you have to decide who to trust your life with in the heat of a moment.





	1. [Prologue] Trust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inveracities](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inveracities/gifts).



1.

 

 

“Jamie, bring the dessert in,” Peter insists.

James lights up.

“Padfoot, why don’t you bring it in? You’re the -” James twists his tongue around to find the right accent, and flourishes his arm out elegantly, palm up. “Patissier.”

Sirius swings up from his seat and bows slightly, grinning a bit too much, and saunters into the kitchen.

“Padfoot prepared dessert?” Remus says, incredulous, his bushy eyebrows arched.

“Yup.”

“Chinese takeout for entree and Sirius’s handmade cake for dessert, eh?”

“'S right.”

Remus and Peter turn to stare at each other. James leans back in his chair and clasps his hands at the back of his head, amusedly observing the scene. Meanwhile, the mouth-watering smell of baked chocolate wafts around the room and reaches the table, and Remus actually stands up from his seat a bit.

“Fucking hell." His eyes fix devilishly on the cake sitting innocently on Sirius’s tray.

Sirius sets it down on the table neatly, his pearly whites gleaming as he smirks at Remus. James tugs on his arm, getting him to sit down, and motions urgently for Remus to do the same.

“So, here’s the thing,” James says, once everyone’s settled, when he catches Peter greedily reaching across for the cake knife. “Oi, not yet, Wormtail.”

Peter slumps back in his seat.

“Can’t it wait until after dessert, whatever this is?” says Remus impatiently.

“No.”

James glances sideways at Sirius, whose expression is suddenly stoney, introspective, as he gives James a nod.

James clears his throat. “Hey, you guys, I really appreciate your enthusiasm for dessert, so I’m just going to cut straight to the point, yeah? There’s someone in the Order who’s spying for Voldemort. We don’t know who, but they can’t find out where Sirius and I live. Voldemort will do anything to finish us both once he knows we’re here. At least that’s what Dumbledore reckons.”

A destabilizing, cold veil of air descends upon the table; the chocolate cake may as well freeze up.

Remus stares at James, and then at Sirius. Peter fidgets in his seat,a frown etched on his forehead.

“We need a Secret Keeper,” Sirius clarifies.

Remus blows out a long breath, whistling hollowly.

“Oh,” Peter squeaks out.

“Either one of you,” James says. “Well, we were rather thinking Remus, since…“

“Since Peter can be a bit of a chicken sometimes, no offense.” Sirius finishes.

“Oi!” Peter says half-heartedly.

“But also,” James adds quickly, “they likely won’t think we’d trust a werewolf.”

“Don’t be stupid, James, the whole world already knows by now that we don’t give a shit about who’s a werewolf and who’s not,” Sirius quips.

“But we wouldn’t trust a werewolf with a secret as big as this, would we? I mean, you never know when they’ll -“

“Slip up,” Remus says quietly.

Everything goes silent.

James licks his lips awkwardly. “Don’t be silly,” he says into the table, wincing at this entire conversation. “We’re not worried that you’ll give us away. It’s just a diversion -”

“Well, you should be.” Remus’s cuts in, flatly.

“Should be what?”

“Worried.”

James looks up to see Remus’s dead gaze, so honest it comes off as cold.

“Werewolves do slip up. They’re not exactly human on the night of the full moon, are they? Secrets are for humans; no animal can keep a secret. I’d betray you in a heartbeat on the next full moon.”

James looks up.

“We trust you, Moony,” he says eagerly, not having registered a shred of what Remus just said, and catches Sirius nodding gravely out the corner of his eye.

Remus is unaffected. “And that’s exactly why you’ll take my word on this. I  _will_  betray you.”

He leans back on his chair and crosses his arms, coolly excusing himself from the discussion. James drops his gaze once again onto his dirty plate, the idea of chocolate cake infinitely unappetizing.

“I guess it’ll be you, then, Wormtail. Good lu - “

“Are you joking? No, it can’t be Wormtail -“ Sirius blurts out loudly.

Peter squirms.

“It  _can_  be him.” James locks his eyes determinedly with Peter’s big, scared-shitless ones. “Peter, you’ll do this for us, won’t you? Please?”

“I - uh - sure -“ Peter splutters.

“No,” Sirius says.

“ _Why not?_ ” James rounds on Sirius. Why is he being so distrustful? They’ve been best friends - they’ve  _all_  been best friends - since fresh fucking first-year.

“Are you _mental_ , James? Wormtail? Fucking Secret Keeper. Wormtail.”

“Yes, Wormtail— _Peter_ , and there’s nothing wrong with that, and you shouldn’t be so goddamn revolted by the idea,” James says, watching Peter start to shake with nerves or rage or god-knows-what.

“Peter, did you say ‘sure?’ You’ll do this?” James asks, wincing slightly when it comes out more like a demand.

Peter licks his lips, hesitates, then opens his mouth emptily. Sirius leers silently beside James. Remus pretends not to listen.

“Sure,” Peter says finally, more firmly than James expected. It makes him happy.

He claps his hands together and forces a grin. “Great. That’s settled then. Thank you, by the way,” he booms, reaching across to ruffle Peter’s hair.

Peter shrugs him off, adamantly not looking at Sirius.

“ _Now_  can we start on the dessert?”

 

***

 

They finish the cake in silence - or near-silence, as James constantly tries and fails to start an amiable conversation - and if it weren’t for the sight of Remus’s and Peter’s plates being licked clean and speckless, James would have worried about them.

Who he  _is_  worried about, and angry more than worried about, is Sirius. He has no idea why he’s been especially stubborn not to let Peter be Secret Keeper, but dare he say he’s more offended than confused. Sirius and Peter are fucking  _Marauders_ ; Sirius should know to trust him with anything. The thought that Sirius couldn’t bring himself to do just that tonight is so mind-boggling and disgusting that it’s shattered all his precious, affectionate Marauder memories into minuscule pieces, etching a thousand sharp cuts onto the inner walls of his mind.

This is what wartime feels like, James understands suddenly, and his eyes begin to sting.

 

***

 

Remus and Peter leave shortly after that, muttering “thank you”s, and pretending not to notice James’s sudden change in mood. Sirius shows them to the door, and James hears them talk softly but he doesn’t care to eavesdrop; most likely the usual stuff like “come back soon,” which used to be a real invitation but would now only sound like empty politeness, or it could be “take care of James,” which they know James would absolutely hate for them to say. James isn’t a  _kid_ ; he can take care of his own mental breakdowns.

Then Sirius returns to the living room, flying the dishes to the sink in one sweep of his wand. He doesn’t follow them there, though - instead, he comes over to James and pats him on the shoulder.

“Hey.” He ruffles his hair.

James ducks away.

“Why did you say that, Sirius?” He says, keeping his head bent over the now-cleared table, squeezing his eyes to ease his tears and pounding headache. “Why did you say you couldn’t trust him?”

“I never said that,” Sirius says quickly.

“You implied it. Heavily.”

Sirius sighs.

“Well, I can’t. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth - maybe in future, I’ll be able to. Just something about him - his behavior - his personality - he's never come off as much of a brave, loyal friend who’d do anything to keep a secret -“

“Well, why?” James’s shoulders start to shake and he feels Sirius kneading them with his palms.

“Why? Well, he hasn’t exactly proved to us that he can be trusted with something as big as this, has he?” Sirius drags out slowly, like he’s turning his brain inside out to voice his opinion as delicately as possible.

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, for example - just an example, alright - the night of the Incident - “

James’s heart constricts. He looks up sharply at Sirius. How  _dare_  he brings up the Incident - if he remembers correctly, it had been  _Sirius_  who had betrayed them, who had betrayed Remus’s secret to fucking Severus on the night of the fucking Incident. He takes off from his seat.

“The incident, really? _Really,_ Sirius?”

He jams a pointed finger into Sirius’s chest, seething, and settles his voice down low and quiet.

“Wow. I love how you just brought up the Incident here, right at this moment, blaming Peter and talking about loyalty; really, out of all things, the  _Incident_ , you’ve really gone out of your mind, Padfoot,”

His words sting Sirius: his eyes close half-way like the sight of an angry James is literally hurting him, his jaw tightening.

“I didn’t mean it like that -“ Sirius starts, but James is already making his way blindly up the stairs.

He stumbles on a step and bangs his knee, and it doesn’t hurt.

 

***

 

James is trapped inside a narrow, dark brick alleyway - rather, the space around him is filled up with black fog. It could be smoke, if not for the absence of smell.

He can’t rely on his smell, or his sight for that matter, and he can’t hear anything - except - no, that’s just the wind.

He calls out the first thing that comes to mind.

“Sirius?”

His voice comes out foreign, distant, like he’s shouting at himself from a mile away. Like he’s shouting into a pitch-dark void, which he is. He gulps down a panicked sob, yells again.

“Sirius!”

He stumbles around, arms stretched out in front of him, and he can’t even make out his hands it’s so dark. He feels pain in his eyes and realizes he’s been squinting them too hard. His thigh brushes against something sharp, forcing a gasp out of him.

“Sirius!"

“James?”

He shoots up from his pillow, catches his head in his hands and hunches over. He brings his knees up and closer to himself, making sure that his thigh isn’t hurt. He’s breathing a bit too hard. His eyes are working again, and his sight adjusts its focus onto his navy-blue jeans, the hem of his khaki t-shirt, the white sheets beneath him.

“James?” Sirius’s voice is much closer now.

A pair of arms wrap firmly around his head. His face presses into the material of Sirius’s sweatshirt - James’s sweatshirt, since it was his in the first place - it smells like three-year-old-James’s teddy bear he used to sleep with on lonely nights. A little stale and on the brink of sour, but funnily enough, perfectly snug. It smells like himself and it slows down his breathing considerably.

“James,” Sirius mutters into his ear. As if sensing that James is being comforted by his sweatshirt, he locks his face in closer, which gets James’ nose crumpled up. Tears steadily wet the cotton, sniffles muffling against it.

“ _James_.”

Sirius gently pushes him back so that James is lying on his back again, and it’s then that he finally looks up at Sirius. His expression is one of concern and sadness and utter  _love_ , so much love that James struggles to remember what it was that they had been arguing over just a second before he fell dead asleep on the bed. After a few, sluggish moments of contemplation, he remembers that it had been on the matter of Peter’s being Secret Keeper, and it feels so totally insignificant that he just has to tell Sirius that. So he does.

Sirius smiles somewhat sadly. “People change in critical moments. Maybe Peter will, too, now that he's got the responsibility.”

James shakes his head.

“Uh-huh. But I don’t want to talk about Peter at this moment.”

“So, you want to talk about - what? How amazing I look in this sweatshirt?”

“Arsehole,” James says, swatting at him casually. His heart warms at how Sirius is not showing any signs whatsoever of bringing up the nightmare that James so evidently just had.

“On a scale of one to ten, one being the worst and ten being godly, how do you rate this look?”

Sirius cranes back a bit, unlocking his arms from around James to give him a better view, but James immediately makes a grab for his arms and promptly wraps them around himself again. Sirius laughs, obliges, and combs his fingers through James’s hair just to get them stuck, as always. It’s soothing, anyway.

“Zero, maybe. It’s not even your sweatshirt to begin with.”

“It’s as good as mine—finders, keepers.”

“And where exactly did you find it?”

“It was lying around neglected in the laundry room for  _days,_ Prongs, honestly.”

Sirius’s voice slurs drowsily, and his eyelids close all the way, and James begins his favorite private game of tracing each long, dark eye-lash with his fingertip. Even though Sirius is practically lying on top of him, he can't bother to wake him up. The smell of his shampoo is putting him to sleep himself.

At least, if he has another bad dream, he’ll wake up to Sirius’s entire weight literally stacked onto him. But then again, he doesn’t think he’ll dream this time around.

 

***

 

For the first time in weeks, James is gently guided into consciousness by natural sunlight and chirping birds and Sirius’s motionless form right beside him, mouth agape with a sloppy arm slung across James’s chest— _not_ a blaring alarm.

Voldemort seems to be going through a little slump of his own, presently—a welcome slump, James must say, as the number of panicky emergency Order meetings has been gradually decreasing the past month.

James just sort of lies there and gazes dreamily at his boyfriend's face. He feels blessed just to be staying there, lost in time, knowing that when Sirius wakes up - and at his own comfortable timing, at that - the first thing he’ll see is James and the first thing that’ll come to his mind is James, and not the stupid Order.

Sirius is finally fully awake around midday. They proceed to have lazy sex in bed, after which they get out of bed together, take a lukewarm shower together, and make pancakes together.

It’s only way later when they’ve eaten stacks of pancakes and are already halfway into a trashy ‘superhero’ movie when James brings it up absent-mindedly.

“You know, if Peter decides to give us away anyway, we can always fight him off.”

Sirius turns his head toward him, looking mildly confused.

“You mean Voldemort? You mean we can always fight  _Voldemort_  off?”

“Sure, why not?”

“‘Why not’ -  _Why not._  You’re ridiculous, you know, you really are, Prongs.”

“What’s so ridiculous about it?" James grins, shoves an elbow into his rib. “Come on, we’ve always excelled in Defense, Dumbledore’s always been keeping an eye on us - recruited us into the Order earlier than anyone else in the grade, remember? Not even Moony lined up to us.”

Sirius just sort of laughs, and shakes his head, like it’s the biggest joke of the year. James can kind of see it too; how absurd it must have sounded. Voldemort isn’t some old boggart or troll, and even James knows he’s far more dangerous than the random obstacle in Defense Against the Dark Arts NEWTs.

So they share in on the joke; they laugh and laugh, they roll around on the cramped couch, drowning out whatever silly shooting and bombing noises that blast out of the movie, and James decides it’s a good time to forget about the war for a moment.

 

***

 

The doorbell rings.

James’ eyes close automatically. _Fuck, not another casualty._

Unlike everything else, casualty reports are not given out via owl or floo because of their “delicate nature” or some shit. They actually hand-pick an Order member each time who’s specifically suited for the job—James doesn’t know exactly what _kind_ of person is qualified as specifically suited to go around everyone’s homes, pulling on a solemn face and announcing in a dark voice, _sorry, someone-or-other just died._ But it had been Barty Crouch for the Fabian brothers’ death, McGonagall for Marlene McKinnons'… he hasn’t been keeping track of the rest.

The next time he opens his eyes, Sirius is gone - he can hear a conversation going on, but only Sirius’s rather blunt voice drifts its way into the living room, almost like he’s talking on the floo.

“No, he’s fine…”

“Yeah.”

“Sure.”

“Right, I’ll see you.”

Soon, Sirius walks back in and slumps back onto his spot on the couch.

“Who was it?” James prompts.

“Evans.”

“Lily?"

Sirius nods carelessly, fixing his stare on the TV. “Yes, Jamie,  _Lily_.”

“Well, what did she want?”

“You,” Sirius says sourly.

James raises his eyebrows.

“She wanted to see you,” Sirius clarifies, sighing a bit. “Said she heard about us having a - ah, what was it - a ‘ _fight._ ’ She thought you’d be alone here, for whatever reason - in everyone’s imagination it’s always  _me_  who leaves you, not the other way around…”

“She thought you’d left me?”

“Yes, Prongs. Keep up.”

“But why would she want to see me?”

“God knows why, Jamie, but don’t you think it’s time we started paying attention to the movie again?” Sirius is keeps staring blankly at the TV, looking as if he’d find almost anything more interesting than what’s going on on-screen.

 _Boom_.

“So tell me - who’s that that just got shot?”


	2. Concealment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you may have noticed that this fic is dedicated to @inveracities - I read their Prongsfoot fic a while ago and fell head-over-heels for it. Go check it out if you haven't yet!!! In many ways, their fic "Pioneers" inspired my own and I am eternally grateful for it; hence this special thanks.
> 
> Without further ado; here goes the second chapter xD

2. 

 

The next day isn’t so fortunate. James’s first thought of the day is _ouch,_ because some bird-like creature is slapping its wings relentlessly on his face. He dares himself to open his eyes and barely recognizes that it’s his own owl, Whistles, before snapping his eyes shut at the next menacing _flap._

After a moment of struggling, moaning, and flailing around, he manages to fling the animal out of the way and run out of the room, flies downstairs and seethes at the sight of Sirius already primly dressed and switching off the stove with a flick of his wand.

Sirius turns around and smirks at James.

“Well, who do we have here? A grumpy, dimwitted early-morning _James,_ the subject of caution for everyone in town.”

James grunts, reaching a hand towards his hair and messes it up, yawning despite himself.

The owl, having followed James, passes by right beside his head and swoops toward Sirius, twittering in circles above his head as he shoots owl candy into the air.

“ _Don’t_ do that, she’s overweight already.”

Sirius changes the subject. “So, you got the message?”

Whistles lands beady-eyed on his shoulder, beaks snapping and throat bobbing in quick succession, and sticks out a twiggy leg.

“What mes- _oh.”_

Sirius takes the near-invisible little card attached onto Whistles’ leg, and waves it in James’s face, wiggling his eyebrows stupidly. Whistles unfurls her wings once and collapses them in what looks to be a mocking gesture.

“Shut up,” James says before Sirius can say anything, and snatches the message from his fingers.

 

 

_Alert: Order of the Phoenix Meeting_

 

_Today, 20th October, 7:30 AM_

 

 

James looks up. “What time is it now?”

“Quarter to seven.”

James grunts for the second time that morning, shuffles to his seat at the kitchen table, places his head on the surface and falls half asleep.

 

***

 

Even though Sirius ends up sharing his french toast with James - albeit grudgingly - they’re still two of the last people to get there. To be fair, they’re not even late - two minutes _early,_ in fact, and yet everyone already seated around the long mahogany table of the Room of Requirement turns around to look at them in a not-so-pleasant way.

“Sorry we _delayed_ everyone,” James says sarcastically before he catches sight of Dumbledore twinkling his eyes at him.

“Professor Dumbledore!” James starts. “Sorry - I mean - you know, well, I didn’t mean the meeting was delayed because of -“ James doesn’t quite know what he’s spluttering about. Sirius sniggering beside him and pecking his flushed cheek isn’t helping, either. Everyone around them laugh; even Minerva fucking McGonagall is having a hard time containing a smile.

Dumbledore comes to the rescue; raises his hand to halt James.

“Please, James, just _Albus,”_ he chortles. “Thank you for appearing on time. Please, take a seat, the both of you.”

James’s face is still a little hot when the meeting begins.

“I apologize for the urgent call - I do hope you have all enjoyed the past few days off work to the best of your abilities. I’m afraid I do not have much information to share this morning. I have neither good nor bad news, with the exception that the Minister is continuing to send me threatening messages via his Patronus. I am nearly convinced by now that he is being controlled; most likely under the Imperius.”

Everyone looks around, trying to appear unaffected but most of them failing to hide their scandalized feelings. They woke up this early for - what? For nothing? _‘Not much to share?’_

Dumbledore continues. “I merely called for you all to appear today because we must do something crucial to protect two of our valued members who are sitting at this table with us. James Potter and Sirius Black have been marked as red-class targets by the Death Eaters and Voldemort himself. To ensure their safety, the two have agreed they must start relying on a Secret Keeper, with my insistence. Accordingly, they have already secured one for themselves. I will not name them here as it may compromise the safety of all involved. If none of you object, I will now begin the process of casting _Obliviate_ on each and every one of you with the exception of these two young men over here -“ he waves a hand in James and Sirius’s direction - “and of course, the Secret Keeper, to the extent that you no longer know the location in which the two reside in if you do happen to know at this moment. You will also forget that they have a Secret Keeper.”

For the entire time, Dumbledore’s tone does not waver from one-hundred-percent technical, it almost comes off as detached.

Everyone’s looking around uneasily, but most of all they’re looking at James and Sirius. James sees it all in their wide-open eyes - fear, disbelief, sympathy. He does a little shrug whenever his eyes meets theirs. The attention is getting kind of annoying, really. Sure, he does love attention, but this is the wrong kind, and if it weren’t for Sirius’s arm around his middle he would have excused himself and gone home. For the entire time, he avoids looking at Peter; he’s scared of what’s written on his face. Knowing Peter, he might already be giving himself away.

Dumbledore pulls James and Sirius aside before proceeding to _Nox_ the floating candles out. He also casts _Muffliato_ to make sure no one will be able to guess the Secret Keeper by eavesdropping. In a blink of a second, the room is both pitch-dark and dead-silent.

“Thank you,” Dumbledore says less than a second later. The candles come back alive.

The meeting is adjourned shortly after, and James and Sirius are just making their way towards the secret exit along with everyone else when Dumbledore stops them, laying a hand on each of their shoulders.

“James, Sirius. Please stay behind. I wish to talk to you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Dumbledore raises a thin eyebrow.

“I mean, yes, Albus.”

Sirius looks quizzically at James; James shrugs back.

Dumbledore doesn’t sit down, nor does he ask the two of them to.

“Forgive me for wondering, how are you enjoying your post-Hogwarts lives so far?”

“Perfectly well, thank you,” Sirius answers flatly, obviously anxious to get to the point.

“Good, good,” Dumbledore doesn’t seem to care much about their post-Hogwarts lives, either. He doesn’t say anything else until the door closes behind the last Order member to follow out.

“There is something, I am afraid,” He starts abruptly, “that I must ask from the both of you. I understand that the past few weeks have been especially demanding for you, but it will only become more so after today, and I am forced to implore you that this will not discourage you by any means. We are discussing about your own protection; the highest degree of magical protection, in fact.”

James and Sirius nod. _How bad can this be?_

“You must begin learning to close your minds.”

James looks at him, not understanding.

Sirius starts. “Are you talking about -“

“Occlumency, yes. Extremely difficult, deceivingly subtle bit of magic, Occlumency is. But I have no doubt that the two of you will master it thoroughly over the course of the next few weeks. And you must do this, soon. You must not let Voldemort, nor any of his allies, discover that they can use either of you to effectively lure the other into a trap, so that the both of you may find yourselves in difficult situations. I have known Voldemort since he had been a first-year at Hogwarts, and dare I say that I am more than sufficiently aware of how he likes to follow through with his best tactics.” Dumbledore’s tone is straightforward, deadpan, but his eyes bore at them with a profound something close to fieriness.

James’s mouth opens and closes. Sirius seems to be in a similar turmoil. At the very least, they find the audacity in themselves to nod.

Dumbledore smiles sadly. “He abuses love to weaken his enemies.”

 

***

 

“So? What do you think about it?” James tries, once they’re back in Hogsmeade, on a stop at The Three Broomsticks.

“I think it’s pretty cool. I’ve always wanted to learn it. Legilimency as well, actually, but only after mastering Occlumency, obviously,” Sirius says. “You?”

“Yeah. So do I, I think.”

“You think?”

“I mean - “ James licks his lips. “It’s cool - it’s just - what the hell did he mean about our having to not let it ‘show’ in public?” It’s been bothering him ever since their chat with Dumbledore. “Didn’t he say something like - we should ’hide that which should not be seen by our enemies?’ How do you translate that into everyday speech?”

“It’s highly open to interpretation,” Sirius says, looking a little uncertain himself. “I take it to mean that we can’t fool around with each other in public anymore.”

“Fool around - you mean, less PDA?”

Sirius spits out a laugh. “ _No_ PDA.”

James looks down at his butterbeer, frowning. “Oh.”

“We’ve got to hide what we are to each other. We’re just friends- acquaintances - people who went to school together. We don’t live together anymore; we just happen to work for the same organization - for Dumbledore.”

They drink in silence. Sirius seems lost in thought, and James is, too, but only for a moment. The chatter surrounding them is strangely peaceful and even somewhat mellow - it’s encouraging to forget entirely that there’s stuff going on out there, big stuff, war stuff. James sort of soaks in the ambience then, closing his eyes, letting the autumn daylight spark through the window and through his eyelids to glow in a soothing shade of red.

When he reluctantly opens them again, Sirius is staring at him.

“Sirius?”

His expression is intense, eyes gleaming bright even amidst the dashing sunlight; almost hungry. He seems a little out of it, as if day-dreaming, only he’s day-dreaming especially fiercely about something that involves James -

“I want to kiss you.” His voice is quiet, confiding.

James blinks. It’s strange to hear that; Sirius has never said anything like it aloud. It’s never, “I want to kiss you,” he just kisses James whenever he wants to. James almost says in surprise, “oh - well then, go on -“ before he remembers why the hell Sirius said it in the first place. He’s not asking for _permission_ , he’s not saying it because he _wants_ to kiss him - but because he _can’t_. He can’t kiss him right then and there just like they’ve been used to doing all the freaking time, whether it be over just this exact round table by the windowsill at the Three Broomsticks, or by the hills overlooking the Shrieking Shack, or tip-toeing on the steps of any of the moving staircases in the castle - it’s been part of their second nature, their shared nature, and suddenly, all of it is forbidden. It’s all uncomfortable and weirdly suffocating, like the thought alone is enough to make James struggle slightly for air.

He sees Sirius’s slim wrist lying idly next to his near-empty glass. James’s fingers prickle with the natural urge of just _going_ for it, taking it in his hand, and he has to hypothetically shake himself out of it. He quickly dumps a couple of loose sickles on the table and reaches for Sirius’s shoulder instead. In a blink, they’re back at their driveway, racing each other to the front door.

“This is weird, Sirius,” James wonders aloud while his body lights up at the long-denied contact, moaning despite himself. Sirius only hums in response as he squeezes his arse repeatedly, continuing to snog the daylights out of him.

“I mean, this is _wrong,_ ” James blabbers in between large gasps. “We shouldn’t have to run all the way home just for _this_ -“

“Shh,” Sirius says suddenly. His groping stops as his hands travel up to catch the sides of James’s head. “Shh,” he says again and leans in to kiss his forehead softly. “I know. But at least we still get to live together, right? We still get to be together.”

They start again at that, but much slower. James loses himself in it, each moment blurring and slurring into the other until he can’t keep track of exactly where on Sirius’s body his hands are traveling, where he’s being touched himself. He can only recognize that it’s pleasurable and that everything is back to nice and safe and warm again, even if it’s temporary. 

They don’t go any further than a little making out. They move hand-in-hand and dreamlike toward their bedroom and curl around each other on their grateful bed to sleep it all away.

 

***

 

 

Occlumency is being rather nasty to the both of them.

Soon, however, they realize that it’s not the art of closing your mind in itself that’s tricky - it’s their state of mind that’s the problem most of the time: it’s what they’ve been doing right before, how they’re feeling at the moment, how at peace they are.

For example, there was that one time when they were practicing right after a hot bath and Sirius was still half-dressed - “I need to cool off a little,” he’d justified himself - and distracted James to no end. His attention kept on roaming toward Sirius’s naked top half: the smooth, shallow ebbs and flows of his chest muscles, his abs, his dark brown nipples igniting James’s dirty imagination. That’s when Sirius decided to play that nasty trick and fried James’s brains inside out with the mind-invading curse before pulling out and taking the mickey out of him. James had scowled and left the room immediately, had sworn that he wouldn’t continue unless Sirius found the decency in himself to dress. 

Then, just today, they’d had sex in the afternoon and had decided to start practicing immediately afterwards. James had still been basking in the afterglow, and Sirius had absolutely no fucking right to laugh when James had stumbled backwards, his befuddled mind having failed to meet Sirius’s _Legilimens_ curse head-on. It was just fucking _unfair;_ it was cruel. It had been _James’s_ turn to be bound against the armchair and blindfolded and pushed deep into subspace. So that was when James naturally got irritated and struck the curse right back at Sirius, who had still been laughing - and he’d caught a glimpse of _that_ particular night when Sirius had run away from his parents. His father beating him in the dining room, right in front of a terrified Regulus, spitting his head off and smacking his belt everywhere, on the walls, on the table, on Sirius. His mother was worse, she was absolutely _wicked;_ shrieking out derogation in all its pure forms, some that James doesn’t want to even repeat in his head, others so old-fashioned that didn’t even make sense to him, and yet others that were about _James_ himself. James’s _Legilimens_ curse had been flown off, then, and he’d stumbled a few steps backward and drove his hip into the sharp edge of a desk. Sirius was already gone, the ear-shattering bang of the door still ricocheting around the bedroom as James struggled to get up, rubbing at his hip -

Even as he’d screamed after his disapparating figure, he knew he’d made a horrible mistake.

 

***

 

“Sirius,” James calls into his mirror for the umpteenth time that day.

“Sirius, _please,_ I’m sorry, _please_ forgive me -“

The clock strikes midnight; it had been Sirius who’d selected that one out of an antique shop, claimed that it had been owned by a powerful wizard whose name James hasn’t cared to remember.

“I’ll do anything, Sirius, come home, you must be hungry -“

 _That freaky old broker didn’t know what he was talking about! He thought it’d been a_ Muggle’s _possession, for honesty’s sake…_ Sirius had guffawed brashly, lifting the clock to the wall of their living room.

“I’ll cook you up dinner, alright? What was it the one you liked, pasta alfredo? Yeah, I’ll cook you up some of that right now, if you want, and I can put in that parma ham in - remember we bought that expensive one the other day?”

 _It strikes?_ James had asked, bewildered. _Every hour,_ Sirius had said happily. _How the fuck are we supposed to sleep?_ Sirius had scowled, then. _I got us the ancient clock owned by the one and only most influential wizard of the past millennium and you want to know how you’re supposed to sleep?_

“You can _obliviate_ me if you want! I’ll forget what I saw, I’m willing to! If it’s so sensitive to you -”

“ _Sensitive?”_

James jumps. It’s the first time Sirius has responded that day - the first time he’s even given any sign of having listened to his mirror, despite the fact that it’s practically impossible _not_ to listen to it, not even if you shatter it.

“Sirius! Hey, Sirius, I’m going to the kitchen now -“ he runs into the kitchen. “I’ll prepare the pasta, alright? See, I’m opening the fridge now -“

James flips his mirror around and lets it reflect the inside of the fridge, takes the package of pasta strings in his hand and waves it dramatically.

“It’s not fucking _sensitive.”_

Sirius’s angry, I-don’t-take-your-bullshit voice from behind him makes him yelp. He spins around and sees Sirius standing there, right over the threshold to the kitchen.

“Oh, well, hi there,” James giggles in relief. Suddenly self-conscious, he jams his mirror into his back-pocket and slams the fridge door shut. “I see you’ve come back.”

Sirius ignores that, just sort of flashes pure fury out of his eyes. James winces.

“Right, well, I didn’t mean it was _necessarily_ sensitive to you -“

“You’re damn right. It wasn’t sensitive to me; it was my goddamn _privacy_ that you were invading -”

“Hey,” James says, pointedly but trying to keep it playful. “ _You_ invade my privacy all the time, you take advantage of my occupied mind all the time during practice! I don’t get _pissed_ from that -“

“I wasn’t pissed, you obsessive motherfucker, I only wanted to take a fucking breather and _you_ didn’t want to respect that -”

“You wanted a ‘breather?’” James giggles like a girl - he’d thought Sirius had left him for good - if not for good, then for a _long_ time. And Sirius had merely been taking a ‘breather.’

“Next time you’re taking a breather, just tell me, alright? Tell me, ‘hey, James, you’re invading my privacy so I’m going to go take a breather -‘“

Sirius looks about _this_ close from hitting him, so James rushes toward him while he still can, unnerving him with a kiss.

“Don’t you dare…” Sirius tries to escape.

James hugs him tight and kisses him harder, swaying him a bit, left to right, right to left. He brings a hand up to his hair, teasing the long, smooth strands and whispering nothings into his neck. He can’t stop laughing; it’s so good to have him back, so good to smell him again.

By the time James brings in the steaming bowl of pasta to the living room, Sirius is back to normal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is getting overly cheesy - the first two chapters have been a repetition of happy -> angry -> happy again. I promise you there will be better drama from the next chapter hehehe
> 
> BTW, any thoughts? xx


	3. Distance

3.

 

The next time the Marauders meet up, they can’t do it at James and Sirius’s house. Remus isn’t technically supposed to know where they live, even though James could bet his own life that it wouldn’t be much of a problem. Still, he wouldn’t want him to get into serious trouble just because he knows, and people find out that he knows, and somehow he’s made a target by some Death Eater. As much as James hates it, the fewer people who know, the better.

“Why couldn’t it be the Three Broomsticks?” Peter whines, showing blatant disgust as he sets his drink down for good.

“Change of scenery,” Sirius says simply. James knows that he’d insisted on The Hog’s Head solely because he knew it’d upset Peter.

Remus rolls his eyes, looks out the grimy window at the deserted back alley of Hogsmeade.

“So, _Re-_ mus,” Sirius sing-songs. “Say, how are you enjoying your new mission?

Sirius has been going on about it the whole week, ever since he and James found out that Remus had been given a mission earlier than any of the other Marauders. _What did the fucking werewolf do that was so special, other than howl around crazily every month like a girl dealing with cramps?_

 _Be nice,_ James had said, even though he had rather been on the prickly edge himself. _We’ve just got to prove ourselves - we’ll master Occlumency in a heartbeat and Dumbledore will be sending us off on our own mission soon enough, you’ll see._

Remus shrugs a little too nonchalantly. It’s a shrug he’s done a hundred times before, like when he was being interrogated about where he’d been hiding his stash of Honeydukes candy. _I’ve already had them all - there’s none left!_

“It’s a little dull, to be honest,” Remus says in a tone that’s a little _too_ dull as he keenly observes his glass of Butterbeer. “Just what you’d expect - gathering information, interviewing victims, and the like.”

Remus shrugs and looks out the window again, obviously uncomfortable. Before James can steer the topic away, however, Sirius pushes even further, clearly reveling in the sheer awkwardness of the conversation. He leans in.

“Interviewing _who?_ Come on, Remus, we won’t tell. Who did you interview last and what did they say?”

“Yeah, what did they _say?_ ” Peter pipes in, excited to be in on a secret.

Remus clears his throat. “Hey, listen, I’ve got to -“ he’s already pushing his chair back. It screeches against the wood and almost startles James’s feet into standing up as well.

“Moony -“ he raises a hand helplessly.

“Not so fast,” Sirius drawls. “Come on, this is fun tea-spilling time. Do you not trust us? Or do you have to run to your mysterious lovely _mission_ again?”

“It really is none of your business,” Remus snarls as he goes out the door. “I’ll see you around.”

The ancient doorbell clangs after his absence, echoing around the nearly empty pub. The barman by the counter lifts his face to look at them. The three of them sit silently for a few moments.

James is absolutely _seething_ inside. He doesn’t _dare_ look at Sirius, he doesn’t think he can stomach it - at least until his next outrageous remark.

“Speaking of trust -“ Sirius begins. “You better not give us away, Wormy, or we’ll have your head.”

Peter whimpers in his seat.

In a sudden spike of rage, James’s hand slams on the table. His butterbeer splashes onto his robes, onto Sirius’s robes.

“What the fuck is your _problem?_ You scare Remus away, and now you’re threatening Peter? Exactly what do you hope to accomplish by harassing your best friends?”

“Best friend, is it, that won’t tell us what his fucking _job_ is? I mean, come on, when has ‘confidentiality’ ever meant anything to us?” Sirius challenges, calmly ignoring James’s hand gripping onto his collar. “And then here’s Peter, who can’t keep from squeaking like a chicken merely at the _mention_ of -“

Peter squeaks.

“ _Shut your mouth!_ ” James gives Sirius’s collar a violent shake, frantically looking around. There’s that barman again, whose interest in the conversation is obvious beneath the facade of indifference, the ancient wizard in the corner wearing a heavy cloak right by the fire, the lady in the shabby robes by the bar.

In the silence, though, James thinks he hears something. Something - _swishing,_ something - _someone -_ outside the door.

_Swish._

_Click._

_Ding,_ the door chime rings once again.

Two figures step in.

And that’s it, there they are: Crisp and freshly groomed - newbie Death Eaters in real life, complete with carefully ironed black robes that nearly stretch toward the dusty floor and those somewhat artistic metal masks attached to their heads with menacing slits for air. Raising their wands in mechanical unison - at _them._

“Expelliarmus,” Sirius whispers.

Nothing happens.

More accurately, nothing happens save for Peter jumping in his seat. Both their wands still pointed firmly in the trio’s direction, the Death Eaters hesitate, twitching their necks to look at each other. James imagines them raising their eyebrows and smirking or something, and decides to throw a sideways frown at Sirius.

Sirius seems to be perfectly unperturbed, while it’s Peter who’s fidgeting restlessly in his seat, cowering his face so low it’s almost under the table.

Someone makes a noise from the bar. James looks - It’s the barman setting down the dirty rag cloth and the glass he’s been supposedly cleaning - a soft _thump_ on dry wood _._

“You are not welcome here.” His voice is ragged and disused and eerily disquieting.

James comes to himself.

“That’s right,” he perks up. Not because he actually thinks the Death Eaters will leave the pub at that, of course - it’s simply for show. It’s just James being James, giddy to appear like he knows what the hell he’s doing. “You’re not welcome here.”

A split moment before the curses hit, he manages to produce an adequate _Protego_ shield covering all three of them. Sirius breaks out of it almost instantly, though, shuffling toward the Death Eaters and initiating a two-against-one duel with a showy _bang_. James takes the sliver of bought time to reach across to Peter.

“Peter,” he says urgently, pulling on his arm to drag him father away from the scene. “You should probably leave.”

“I c-can’t, J-James,” Peter gasps. He’s absolutely fucking _terrified -_ his eyes are rounder than James has ever seen them, they’re whiter, shinier, fucking fragile. “I c-can’t.” He holds out both of his shaking hands, palms-up. Both of his _empty_ palms.

“What? Are you fucking - did you fucking _forget_ your wand, Wormtail?”

James can rip out his hair. Peter’s or his own hair, he doesn’t care - he wasn’t expecting Peter to be so blindingly _stupid._

Meanwhile, the blasting noises at the doorway is becoming extremely disturbing. There’s shouting going on by now - not just curses and jinxes but actual yelps of pain, _human_ noises - James can’t allow himself to look just yet.

“I d-didn’t, James,” Peter is nearly sobbing. “I d-didn’t forget, it’s S-Sirius -“

James blinks.

_Sirius -_

Blink.

Peter’s wand -

_Expelliarmus._

_Sirius disarmed Wormtail._

James looks, then. He looks at the scene and sees Sirius lashing around mindlessly with his wand, throwing one of the aspiring Death Eaters onto the table the Marauders had just been sitting at and splinching the other’s knee ruthlessly. James looks as they both cower back, hands flying up stupidly to their masks to keep them attached. James looks as Sirius smirks casually at them, snarls some insulting remark that he does’t quite catch.

James looks at him and he’s infuriated.

He quickly scans the vicinity and finds a nearly-hidden back door - shoving Peter in the general direction, throwing a careless “ _go outside,_ ” joining in the duel - no, _finishing_ the duel. This has to fucking _end,_ he has to have a chat with Sirius right fucking _now._

The mask slips off one of the Death Eater’s faces - James recognizes him vaguely from the bottom of the Prophet’s _Wanted_ section, among the rows of faces titled, ‘least threatening’.

It doesn’t take long after that for the both of them to call it a day. The one with the mask still hanging on decides to zip one more curse - may have been the _Avada Kedavra_ , but then many curses are green - toward Sirius, but James deflects it first, gulping down the annoying coil of fear that overcame him for a split second.

“Hey, I could have caught that,” Sirius says flippantly, although heaving a little. He winks at James.

The Death Eaters disapparate with a crack, dust swirling upward after them.

James rounds on Sirius. “What the fuck is your problem?”

Sirius quirks an eyebrow. “What the fuck is _your_ problem? And where the fuck is Wormtail?” He cranes his head to peer behind James.

“You actually _disarmed_ him, you fucking - you’re disgusting! You’re absolutely _disgusting!_ ”

Tears spring up in his eyes. Dust and wooden remnants attack them, making him blink painfully and spilling the liquid out unapologetically.

“James,” Sirius is all of a sudden a foot away from him, hand coming up to his shoulder. He apparently thinks twice about it, because he drops his hand before it even touches, glancing around and licking his lips.

“Don’t touch me,” James says belatedly. “Tell me why you did that. Tell me the fucking _truth,_ Sirius, I dare you to, or we’re over.”

The effects of those last two words on Sirius are self-evident. His face falls apart in an instant, rendered speechless.

“I swear, if I decide I can’t trust you anymore, _we’re over_.” James repeats, just for the sake of it. Just in case it didn’t get across to Sirius the first time, although it’s pretty obvious it did.

“James, come on, we can’t talk about it in _here,”_ Sirius says quietly. Indeed, it’s rather quiet in there - the three people in the pub must be strangers to each other. Plus, they’re all quite introverted. In James’s periphery, scraps of wood and glass can be seen drifting back into place by the barman’s wordless incantations.

“Just - why don’t you go give Peter back his wand and - fucking _apologize_ to him if you have even a scrap of dignity left in you?”

 

***

 

The entire evening is tense after they get back home - first of all, James apparently seems to have had way too much butterbeer for his own good. The enormous daytime intake of sugary alcohol and the succeeding surge of adrenaline when the Death Eaters decided to stop by forces him into the bathroom a total of three times. He has to hold back his own hair and pick at the places that escapes his fingers and got sprayed by vomit. He takes two showers - first because of all that barf down his robes and a second time because of the cold sweat. He isn’t expecting Sirius to come in all concerned for him, not even when he slips and bangs his arse on the wet floor which he’s sure Sirius heard, but the fact that he doesn’t come in to check on him is an annoying reminder of everything that happened that day.

Sirius comes out of the kitchen carrying two hot mugs of tea.

James takes a seat, plops his elbows against the table, and sinks his chin into his hands. He’s staring into the air when a mug lands in its place.

“Drink. You’ll feel better.”

James ignores him.

“James, we need to talk.”

“ _I_ don’t need to talk. It’s _you_ who has some explaining to do at the very least,” James blurts in a sudden burst of anger.

“Right, yeah. So -“ Sirius clears his throat. “I just wanted to - it was a _challenge,_ alright. I wanted to see if Peter could play his part if he was really pushed to, for once. It’s always us and Moony who’s covering for him, and he never got his chance to do anything to prove himself, and I thought that maybe that’s why he always appears like such a coward, you know? That’s why I just… felt like disarming him today, to see how he’d react, if he’d come to himself and do his part for once.”

James stays silent for a long time. He doesn’t know what to think. He hates it but he’s forced admit that what Sirius is saying has some credibility to it. It’s just that Sirius decided to disarm Peter at the particular moment when their lives were practically in danger and _anything_ could have happened - and disarming an ally could have been the worst, most irreversible decision ever made by a Marauder. 

Also, he can’t think when Sirius is looking at him like that. That face he’s making - a disturbing balance of adamant and unsure - it makes James want to kick him in the groin and run away at the same time. This combined with the thought of Peter sends him crashing into a headache.

“James?” Sirius’s tentative, slightly desperate voice coming from rather far away. “Look, I apologized to him -”

“I don’t know, Sirius,” James says, finally. “One of us could have _died_ today. This isn’t a game. It’s not one of those dares we used to do in school. This is _war,_ Sirius, and you’ve got to realize that.”

Sirius opens his mouth to say something, so James cuts him off.

“I’m going to bed.”

“You’re - what? Hey, but it’s still, like, _nine o’clock!_ ”

James is already heading up the stairs.

“Wait, James! What about your _tea?_ ”

 

***

 

James feels confused and exhausted, and the easiest way to show it is to lay sprawled across the entire bed, taking up Sirius’s space just for the hell of it.

Which is probably why Sirius isn’t there lying beside him when he wakes up in the middle of the night, gasping, having forgotten to clear his mind before bed as per Dumbledore’s instructions. Not completely recalling the contents of his dream/nightmare, but knowing that it was frightening the fuck out of him, he can only shuffle downstairs half-consciously in his pajamas.

His wandlight finds Sirius asleep on the couch, cocooned up in a single layer of blanket he presumably took from the spare bedroom. There’s still the mug of tea on the table. James reaches for it when he jumps at the temperature. Sirius must have cast an endless heating charm, he concludes, just in case James was going to get up in the dead of night and look for a drink to calm himself down. Suddenly, everything is insignificant except for the pure instinct to rush toward Sirius and climb into his arms, to wake him up and make a dumb joke and start things over from scratch.

Of course, it’s not that easy. Things have been going too far lately, farther and farther, and making up with each other every night in bed - or on the couch - is surely not going to keep fixing the real issue. Even James is coming to understand that. He slowly lets go of the irrational desire to curl up beside Sirius, and instead goes to sit on the very edge of the couch, by Sirius’s feet.

It’s getting colder these days. A single blanket is not nearly enough, so he summons two more, draping one over Sirius and one around himself. He lights the fireplace and for the rest of the night he just sort of stares at it: the flickering of the dark red flames, the easiness with which they flash, the absolute consistency of it all. He sits still with his knees hugged close and eyes going dry as he steadily drifts toward daybreak. The crackling of the fire tease in and out of the gentle sounds of Sirius’s breathing, lulling James back into sleep, when -

Sirius’s breaths suddenly come out sharp, shallow, and almost painful. James bucks forward unsuspectingly as Sirius’s foot kicks him hard in the back, nearly sending his mug flying from his hands.

James immediately works out that it’s the same thing that happened to himself just a few hours ago. The natural urge is to shake his shoulders until he opens his eyes, to snake his arms around him and reassure him until he finally calms down. Instead, though, he decides with bumping his knee against Sirius’s.

Sirius comes to with a sharp gasp. He breathes heavily in silence for a while. It’s light enough to see his face - his eyes find James’s after a moment and he shows an awkward grin.

“Morning, Jamie.”

 

***

 

These days, they’re wary every time they go out of the house. They can’t even shop for groceries without keeping a keen eye on their surroundings. They don’t hold hands; most of the time James can’t bring himself to look at Sirius because doing so would want to reach for his hand. Most of the time, in fact, they don’t even talk in public.

 _This is why I’m so upset,_ James reasons, when he catches Sirius winking at the muggle cashier lady. Her mouth is slightly open, her eyes fixed on Sirius’s admittedly above-average face. James is immediately crazy with hatred - directed at those thin lips (James’s lips are fuller), the heavy mascara (James always thought make-up was ridiculous), the green, basic-looking store uniform (James has robes in _emerald_ ).

By the time he comes to himself, Sirius is already moving onto the next aisle. Hurrying to catch up, he grabs everything along the way that he thinks they may need for the next week to jam into the cart. He’s not intent on coming back here to shop again anytime soon, after all.

James senses someone staring. This time, it’s an old man with a huge gray beard, looking skeptical. James shrugs at the man, then stares straight ahead at Sirius to see his point. Yeah, it must be positively unfathomable to see a young man dragging a shopping cart behind him while another nearly jogs to catch up with him, throwing in groceries almost at random - and all of this in silence. The colorless, cheap supermarket lights bounce off of Sirius’s undisturbed hair, mocking the old man, mocking James, mocking everything.

The minute they step outside of the market, Sirius turns into a dog. James immediately follows up with an obliviate charm on every passerby - it’s turned into an unspoken routine by now. Because at least with Padfoot, James can openly be affectionate. They’re no longer strangers this way - well, no one can act like a stranger to a _dog_ anyway _._

They trod unhurriedly to their neighborhood park for a bit of fresh air. Well, James can’t exactly rush with the load of magically shrunken groceries weighing his pockets down. Sometimes he has to remind Padfoot this when it gets overly excited at some other dog he sees on the street or something.

On this particular day, it’s this pretty-looking fifth-year-ish boy in muggle jeans, cooing at Padfoot as he walks past. Padfoot strikes up much like an old-school alarm clock - barking all over the place and wagging his tail madly. He dashes up and into the boy’s open arms, licks at his surprised, laughing face. Even as he’s loving the cute attention, the boy looks a tad bewildered by the over-enthusiasm as he tries to shuffle forward, vaguely ruffling the top of Padfoot’s head and not-so-subtly pushing him back toward the ground. He smiles timidly at James, who stares back expressionlessly.

He giggles nervously. “Look, good boy, I gotta go, fancy seeing you around again -“

Padfoot yips repeatedly, standing tall on his hind legs and wagging his tail the entire time the boy waves back at him, getting farther and farther away before disappearing around the next block.

James feels oddly left out. He picks up a loose cobblestone lying around and chucks it at Padfoot as a gentle reminder. Someone gasps nearby, possibly at the ‘unethical treatment of an animal’ or one of those things the muggle population is up to these days, but it does the trick. Padfoot finally comes down on all four legs and turns around, seeming to remember James’s presence. Remembering that just because he’s a _dog_ at the moment, doesn’t mean he can go drool over other boys. Or girls for that matter.

Padfoot manages to forget all this in an instant, however. He runs off again once they arrive at the park and James settles onto the foot of a tree. James watches as a million - a _billion_ blades of grass soon cover the distance between them.

Padfoot seems to have spotted a friend: a fellow German Shepherd in a golden-brown color. Together, they run in circles and bark excitedly after each other. It leaves James feeling somewhat lonely again.

Soon enough, though, the two friends tire of their never-ending game and Padfoot comes trotting back toward James.

“Padfoot,” James says softly.

Padfoot nuzzles his snout against James’s neck, panting lightly. Does a little wiggle when James brings his arms around his middle and hugs him close, tucks his head further beneath his chin. He tries to focus on breathing in the strange but pleasant dog smell.

The blood-red sunset envelops them both in a tender warmth, and for a handful of magical, golden moments, James feels as close to Padfoot as ever - and with it, Sirius.

He can feel himself smiling again.

 

***

 

During the whole time at their next Order meeting, people flash unnecessary glances at the two of them. Most of them show worry, others show wariness, and still others show pity - it is these people that James wants to kick out of the room. If there’s anything he hates, it’s pity that’s directed at him. Especially when there’s literally _nothing_ anyone should be feeling sorry for. He and Sirius are perfectly well together. It’s not like they’ve _broken up_ or anything - first of all, that’s ridiculous, and anyone who knows them even slightly would know that, and second of all, they literally arrived at the meeting together and are sitting beside each other.

All that’s missing is Sirius’s arm around him. Sirius’s hand on his thigh. Sirius’s eyes on his eyes, each look holding a different meaning which James has always somehow been able to decipher: “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, Dumbledore has a tendency to exaggerate -“ or “Remus should never have cut his hair, look at him now -” or “What at all do you want for dinner?”

“What - wait - _tomorrow?_ ” James isn’t sure he’s heard right. He’s been too distracted by the stares, for one.

“Yes.” Dumbledore replies, sounding as if he was expecting James to be baffled. “I do apologize that everything has to be done so quickly, and at such short notice. But this is an urgent matter. It is about your safety, as I recall I have mentioned to you already.”

“We understand, Albus,” Sirius says quickly before James can say anything else.

“Thank you. I will be waiting for you at my office tomorrow, at one PM. The password will be _Chocolate Frog._ And please, do walk through the castle in your invisibility cloak.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm always up for feedback/constructive criticism. Please let me know your honest thoughts, and potentially what you would like to see more of from this fic! xD  
> Also - would you like the chapters to be shorter, longer, or about this length? Currently my average chapter is about 3000-4000 words but I'm thinking of making them longer to account for the long waiting time between updates.
> 
> Let me know - it's always so lovely to connect with you all.


	4. Surprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lot of surprises.

4. 

 

“Long day ahead, huh?” says Sirius.

They’re in bed, having just woken up.

James yawns. “I suppose.”

They’re expected to completely master occlumency in a few hours. They’ll go visit Dumbledore right afterwards, hopefully with something to prove.

“We’ve been getting pretty good at it, though, haven’t we? I mean, neither of us failed even once when we practiced last.”

 

***

 

They practice for an hour or two, and it’s true. They’ve come a long way - they’re practically occlumency pros by now. What’s more, they’ve even started to figure out how wandless legilimency works, and with trial and error, they’ve gradually been getting the hang of it. You know, the shit that those x-ray eyes of Dumbledore’s pull off. Basically,  _Dumbledore shit._ They’ve actually come close to his level, and mind, they’re still nineteen.

“Merlin’s fucking  _balls._  I did it again.” James says, awestruck by another successful attempt. He looks down at his right hand just to make sure his wand  _really_ isn’t there.

“Shit!” Sirius laughs.

By mid-morning, James realizes that they’re focusing a lot more on honing their legilimency than occlumency. That’s how much of a breeze the latter has become for them, and James is pretty goddamn happy. He and Sirius might finally get sent on a mission today - something that will  _surely_  be more practical than learning how to protect your mind within the protection of your own fucking  _house_.

“My turn,” Sirius chirps. “Leave your mind open.”

James does. He looks dead straight at Sirius, playing a little smirk on his lips, and Sirius smirks back before plunging into his mind.

The warm amber lights of their living room flicker into a brighter, bleaker, paler color. James’s sight adjusts to find out that they’re back in the supermarket, the one they stopped by the day before. The cashier girl in the green, ridiculous polo shirt, her eyes practically hidden behind a monstrous amount of mascara—staring right _through_ James, at Sirius. James turns just in time to catch Sirius winking back, clearly amused.

 _He’s mine,_ James thinks those words before he can stop himself.  _Shit._

Sirius is pulling out, laughing. Eyes scrunched up and mouth wide open, his entire body shaking. He definitely heard it,  _both_ the ‘he’s mine’ and the ‘shit.’

James looks away sulkily, heat pooling into and out of his face.

“I don’t know why that came up, I swear—I’d forgotten about the chick right after that happened.”

“Aww,” coos Sirius faux-sympathetically in between impolite guffaws. “You  _clearly_ haven’t forgotten, Prongsy, otherwise why would it be the first thing on your mind when I tried to read it?”

“Fuck you,” is all James can mutter out.

He heads for the kitchen to clear his head, but of course Sirius will not allow such a break.

A hand lands hard on his shoulder. “Whoa, where are you going? Are you done with practice? Are we done? Did I say we were?”

“Shut up, Sirius,” James says flatly. “You and I both know that we don’t really have to practice anymore. And I’m starving.” 

“Ohhh, I see,” Sirius chuckles from right behind. It’s loud in James’s ear. “You’re  _confident.”_

James is about to enter the kitchen when Sirius spins him around.

James’s face is still slightly hot. “Yes, I’m confident, so what?”

Sirius lights up - with one of his clever ideas, presumably. “Well, _I’m_ not confident.”

“You’re  _not?”_ James scowls, skeptical.

“No,” Sirius stands taller and grins wider, pulling down the hem of his shirt with renewed determination. “Come on, just do it on me one last time, yeah? If I can block you this final time, then we can eat, I promise.”

James narrows his eyes.

“What are you waiting for? Come on, Prongs!” Sirius encourages happily. Gives James’s shoulder a little shake.

 _Funny,_ James thinks, before going for it. He breaks down the walls of Sirius’s mind one after another with ease. Sirius isn’t holding up at all. _What is it?_ James demands.  _I know this is on purpose._

Sirius answers immediately. The lights go out and everything in the room vanishes except for two naked figures standing in the center. As if they’re standing in a spotlight, only the light is glowing  _off_  of their skin rather than from somewhere else. Something like smoke is swirling around the figures, obscuring certain parts and exposing others. It’s erotic; fucking  _surreal_. The hair are the tell-tale signs - the one with black, glossy hair is fucking the other from behind: the one with black, disorderly hair.

 _Sirius_  is fucking  _James._

Spit pools in James’s mouth. Blood pools in his groin. His knees go weak.

At some point, Sirius throws his head back naughtily and moans out from a wide, fixed smile. His hands slide around Jame’s sides and travel down his chest to his stomach to his cock, and James is mesmerized by the pronounced, sculpted veins of those beautiful  _arms_ as they begin to pump up and down in a steady rhythm. The imaginary James twists his head sideways and buries his head in Sirius’s long, weirdly eroticized neck, gasping into it and rubbing his forehead against it. Sirius fucks him  _slow,_  both of their flesh glowering brightly before fading with each spectacular hump.

Only when he finally pulls out does James realize that he probably spent a lot more time in Sirius’s mind than he was conscious of.

“Sheesh,” Sirius whistles, grinning. “You stayed in there for a  _long_ time.” Pretending to be amazed, stretching out the ‘ _long_ ’ sarcastically. James looks down and notes that he’s not the only one who’s got a hard-on. His fingers ache to feel, to just  _touch_  the bulge in Sirius’s trousers, and it’s suddenly a hell of a lot more appetizing than the idea of brunch.

James shakes his head dumbly. The image won’t go out of his head. It’s hopeless; he likely won’t be able to sit down and have brunch unless he deals with his boner swiftly.

He’s left with two options - either run straight to the bathroom where he can pull it off in private in about two seconds, or get off on Sirius - although it’s not really an option to begin with.

Wordlessly, he brings his arms up and circles them tight around Sirius’s neck. Sirius gets the message a split second before James has hopped onto him, latched against his torso with all four limbs. His arse is quickly supported with Sirius’s clasped hands and he starts humping against him without further ado.

Sirius is no longer grinning. No trace of a laugh is left on his face. He’s aroused, he’s drooling, he’s oh so evidently feeling fucking sexy and it makes James feel even sexier.

He ruts so hard into Sirius that Sirius even stumbles back a step or two. He seems to catch his balance soon after, though, and James is speedily carried across the living room toward their couch. He can hear Sirius panting by the time he’s thrown onto it sloppily, greeted immediately by Sirius’s body hovering right above his own.

Sirius’s arms are shaking slightly as they support his weight from either side of James head - from exertion or from arousal, James doesn’t know. One tug on the back of Sirius’s head and Sirius’s elbows give out. Suddenly their lips are touching and their tongues thrashing at each other _._

Sirius vanishes all their clothes.

It feels like fucking  _ages_ since they last touched like this. Like  _this._ Like a newly established, innocently hopeful, and hopelessly head-over-heals couple. Everything that they  _haven’t_  been for the past few weeks and everything that James wants to go back to being. Sirius, too, if his desperate goddamn humping is any indication.

Sirius stops way too soon, and James’s erection is all of a sudden met with cool air. His cock aching too hard for him to focus on anything, he isn’t at all prepared when the tip of Sirius’s lube-covered cock press against James’s entrance.

“Fuck! Oh fuck. Oh  _fuck._ Sirius, Si, Sirius. Fucking -” James loses control of his words, spilling out whatever threatens to come out of his mouth as though he’s morphed into a waterfall, because Sirius is  _inside_ him now, so intense, so pure. How  _good_ it feels, how much  _better_ it seems to get every fucking time _._

A thumb brushes lightly across James’s cheek, and Sirius starts moving inside him,  _exquisitely_  slowly, exactly like how it played out in Sirius’s fantasy just a second ago. James writhes madly on the cushions, falling apart into a gasping puddle of useless nerves and limbs. The only thing in his surroundings that he’s sure of is Sirius’s eyes, which are fixed on him reassuringly, glowing like beacons in a storm of extreme desire and lust.

 _“James.”_  Sirius's voice a hoarse utterance into his ear.  _“Jamie.”_ He pulls back once and pushes in.

James moans unintelligibly, arching up.

“You like that? Yeah?” whispers Sirius. “Oh yeah.”

James can’t really formulate any words at this point. He bucks upwards instead, and when he comes back down his arse lands hard into the crevice between two seat cushions. A sharp pain in a particular area forces out a not-so-sexy gasp.

“Shit.”

Sirius is already scrambling out.

“Shit.” He mutters numbly, holding James’s head tightly in between his hands and looking suddenly horrible. “I’m sorry. I’m  _fucking_ sorry. James? Are you alright?”

James, still immensely  _lost_  in the sudden absence of Sirius inside him, can only keep gasping: “What? What?”

“Sorry,” Sirius’s expression is all troubled, arousal and pleasure completely wiped away. “I didn’t mean to - hurt - got carried away -“

“N-no.” James gasps. “You didn’t. Hurt me. Si - it’s my butt.“

Sirius tilts his head, his hair-ends brushing against James’s flushed cheeks. “Your butt?”

“Uh-huh. My butt.” Everything’s coming together now. James wants to erase those creases in Sirius’s forehead immediately. “I fell on it yesterday in the bathroom. I was barfing all over the place, then I took a shower, then I slipped on the floor and hit my butt.”

James keeps tugging at Sirius’s back. He wants him lying on top of him again  _right now,_  his cock once again buried safe inside him.

Disbelief on Sirius’s face slowly transforms into recognition and then into amusement: eyebrows raised high, head shaking incredulously, hair sweep sideways insufferably across James’s face.

“I can’t believe you. I  _actually_  can’t believe you. Should I believe you?” Sirius mutters in a rather strange tone as he slowly begins to stroke James’s long-neglected cock.

James doesn’t know what to say. Sirius keeps talking.

“I mean, Jamie, you’re such a - you’re just a - I don’t even know. You’re really  _stupid.”_

“Hey,” James protests weakly. After all, he doesn’t exactly know how to disprove it.

“I mean, look at you. I thought that your memory of that fucking cashier girl at the store was pretty bloody ridiculous -“

James whines.

Sirius ignores him. “You don’t even understand…“ It’s almost like he’s musing to himself; his eyes are blank as they see through James, the earlier sexual vigor gone and replaced with something more like… wonder. “You just don’t understand, Jamie, you really don’t understand what you _are_  to me.”

James bucks absentmindedly into Sirius’s stroking hand.

“Well, what  _am_  I to you?” He wants to sound teasing but it comes off as awfully curious.

Sirius’s grey eyes snap back into focus, gaze intense, tongue licking lips as he tries to pinpoint the right words -

“You are…” He grins, then shakes his head quickly. “Never mind. I’m just wondering if I could have had better sex with that supermarket girl, you know?”

 _Huh?_ James stares, flabbergasted by the sudden turn of the conversation and halfway-drugged by the intoxicating feel of Sirius’s palm gently cupping his cock.

“Like, would  _she_  have interrupted by yelping when I was in the middle of fucking  _her,_  all of a sudden telling me that she’d slipped and fallen on her arse in the bathroom and now it hurt? Why do I highly doubt this, Jamie?”

James’s heart wrenches loudly.  _He doesn’t want to have sex with me? He’s attracted to that girl?_ A gazillion questions, a quadrillion insecurities zip through James’s half-befuddled mind.  _Is he giving up on me?_ He feels like crying. He’s confused. He’s panicking at the way Sirius is sniggering like that, laughing silently as if it’s one of those  _dares_. It’s just that James can’t work out what the dare  _is_ , he’s so fucking alarmed.

Sirius bows his head low and sucks on James’s nipple before tugging upward, teeth pulling hard and tongue slurping obscenely.

James arches his back despite himself, gasping.

“Do you agree, Jamie?” coos Sirius around his nipple. “Do you think I could have had smoother, better sex with her?”

James is fucking  _angry._ He can’t believe Sirius is shaming him on _this_ , trying to humiliate him for something as random as bruising his arse and noticing a stranger notice Sirius. It’s fucking  _mean._  And he hates that triumphant look on Sirius, he really wants to smack him.

Instead, in a spur of rage and passion, he flips both of them over and pins Sirius to the couch. Sirius cries in surprise and James shuts him up by inserting two fingers into his mouth.

He feels Sirius’s warm spit gathering rapidly as he starts to tease the inside of his mouth, pushing them farther inside and nearly gagging him. His eyes go wide, throat bobbing, teeth tugging mindlessly on his fingers.

James leans in, aligning their cocks, their chests. “You shut the fuck up, Sirius, you hear me?” He breathes. His eyes inches from Sirius’s mouth, catching every snapshot of his fingers sliding in and out of it. Shining, thickly coated in saliva.

Sirius rolls his hips up and James suddenly remembers how fucking  _aroused_ he is.

He swears, grabs Sirius’s neck.

“I asked you, you fucking deaf idiot -  _did you hear me,_  Sirius?  _Answer me!_ ”

James grinds down, hard. Curling and pressing his fingers into Sirius’s throat. Sirius gags, groans. His teeth bite on his knuckles. His eyes glimmer with tears before they squeeze shut.

He nods frantically.  _Yes, James, yes, I heard you_ \- he seems to be saying, and James is immensely satisfied. He slow-grinds into Sirius and revels in the moans that escape around his fingers and out of Sirius’s hungry, gagging mouth.

Without warning, James pulls his fingers out and reach behind to find their home base right at Sirius’s entrance, where he starts to rub.

 _“Fuck -!”_  Sirius starts moaning extra passionately, having regained his speech. “Oh  _fuck_  - James - you - oh  _fuck,_ ohhhh.” His hips shift up and down for more and more friction.

James slides a digit in and Sirius positively  _writhes._ His face contorted in surprise, pain, pleasure, completely overwhelmed, begging for  _more._ His arse takes it in with not so much trouble, always opening up just when James wonders if he can stretch any further. 

“Nghhh,  _James_ ” Sirius cries hoarsely as James drags his finger out one last time. James reaches an arm toward the floor and fumbles for his wand that must be lying around somewhere, in the midst of all those damned clothes. All the while, Sirius is whining uncontrolledly, wildly, making it all the more harder for James to focus. “Fucking - bloody _Merlin,”_ he heaves. “Quit fooling  _around,_  James…”

At fucking last, James finds it, mutters a hurried lubrication spell before their bodies are finally connected together again. This time, with  _James_  inside  _Sirius._ Sirius’s mouth opens wide, eyebrows knitting in silent concentration. By the time James has settled in to the hilt, Sirius looks about this close to exploding.

How fucking good it feels to be so intimate with Sirius. How special. How addicting, this temporary rejection of reality and everything that happens around them, having sex in this little sanctuary called home, where only they are present and only they are important.

James knocks his forehead against Sirius’s, cuts off his moans by catching his lips. They kiss, open-mouthed - greedy, demanding, and self-assured. Tongue, teeth. Gasps, stifled moans, heady swearing. All that matters in the world is Sirius - Sirius  _with_  James, Sirius and James  _together_. Nothing and nobody else, not in the godforsaken world.

They come at the same time, breaking their kiss in order to look at each other properly in their orgasms. Sirius looks fucking spent, fucking beautiful, and James doesn’t realize until real late that he’s got his own tongue lolling out. Sharing in their shock that they just had the most marvelous time they’d had in a while, they can only ride out their climaxes very slowly, making sure that every precious sparkle of a moment is treasured, that each fading wave of bliss is tasted in synchronization.

 

***

 

James is still a bit dazed when they leave the house - he almost forgets his invisibility cloak. Sirius glares at him, too anxious to even reprimand.

Cloak in hand, James runs back down the stairs and rushes toward the door, where he finds Sirius tapping his foot.

“Don’t worry, Paddy,” James grins, standing on his toes for a second to catch Sirius’s earlobe between his teeth.

Sirius shoves him off with an elbow and hitches his shoulder to brush his ear annoyedly.

“Why would you think I’m  _worried?_ ”

James shrugs, stepping out the door. Sirius joins him right after. With the cloak securely wrapped around the both of them, they find each other’s fingers and apparate…

James gasps at the cold. He turns his head around, this way and that. The streets, the rooftops, the windows… the entire village is covered in a solid, cotton-white. For a few moments, he simply tries to take in his surroundings, mesmerized by the sheer beauty and overcome with the sudden flood of memories associated with the sight.  _That’s where Peter fell face-first into snow when a girl said hi to him_ , he registers, faced with the sight of some snow-covered shrubs over by Madam Puddifoot’s.  _That’s where Sirius and I attacked Remus and Peter with a flock of snowballs,_  James recalls, peering over at where the narrow street bends in a slight angle.

“Hey, remember that?” James says out loud, pointing to it. He knows Sirius will understand what he’s talking about.

Sirius looks at him, and at that moment they’re on the exact same wavelength. He doesn’t say anything - he doesn’t have to - and James doesn’t have to use legilimency to recognize fondness, longing, and sadness all sitting together in that gaze. James feels it, too. He holds onto Sirius’s hand as he takes the first snow-crunching step toward Hogwarts castle.

 

***

 

 _“Yes!”_  James may have said audibly as Dumbledore announces he will be setting them up for their first mission.

Dumbledore smiles. “You have done well, James, Sirius. I am convinced that you are more than ready. However—you must understand this is an extremely serious matter. As I’m sure you already know, you must not take this as something to treat carelessly, or to laugh about.”

James blushes at the exquisite reference to his and Sirius’s infamous disciplinary history.

“Yes, sir,” they say together.

“Tomorrow, you will visit all major places in which many of Voldemort’s followers frequently gather around to trade information. You will listen closely to any and all matters they talk of with extreme care, and take note of everything that you predict may be of any value. In the unfortunate circumstance of a capture, you must at once notify me or a trusted Order member with a patronus. You must not let any of the Death Eaters draw any piece of information out of you—this is where occlumency will come in useful. Is everything clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes,  _Albus,”_  Dumbledore chortles.

 

***

 

Since the Hogwarts grounds are out of bounds for apparition, they happily walk through each deserted corridor and climb down each staircase on their way back to the entrance hall, excitedly discussing all the creative tactics they could potentially use on their missions starting from the next day. Occasionally, they shake off the invisibility cloak to reveal themselves only to greet those they are delighted to see: the Fat Lady, Sir Cadogan, Nearly Headless Nick… the OG. They’re all flipping amazed (Nick does a flip in the air, literally) to find their baby pranksters having grown into somewhat ‘mature’ people fighting for a cause, and not anymore for attention - well, not  _really_. They do a little catching up with each other - mainly, James and Sirius fill them in with recent events in their own lives (paintings and ghosts, it seems, have somewhat mundane lives).

They’re climbing down one of those mid-air staircases in the portrait gallery when the steps beneath them groan and start shifting. James wobbles a bit, having lost his instinct to find his footing immediately after a staircase starts moving. Sirius doesn’t only catch him mid-fall; he guffaws rudely for a second or two before he pushes James against the banister and kisses him, and continues to kiss him roughly even after the stairs have long since settled. Sirius is so forceful, grabbing a handful of his robes by his chest and everything, that it’s all James can do not to topple backwards over the railing and fall a solid sixty feet to the bottom. He stands on his tip-toes to match Sirius’s height and responds as much as he can with equal passion, snatching strands of Sirius’s hair to keep his balance. Sirius groans into the kiss.

They’re interrupted by Peeves, who shouts and zooms vertically up the Portrait Gallery with four basketfulls of pears swinging from his arms—Merlin knows for what reason—and Sirius and James are forced to duck when he whizzes past particularly close. They don’t call out to him—the poltergeist is infamous for having his tongue slip very easily—but James finds it pretty damn hard to smother his laughter against Sirius’s chest. He simply feels so happy, so  _pure_  in this goddamn school, and he’s sure Sirius is feeling the same, judging by the way he was kissing James only a second ago. Merlin and Godric, the way they used to kiss and make out all the time, back when things weren’t so complicated, back in the good old days…

The bell rings and the kids rush out of their classrooms at once. James and Sirius only barely make it outside of the castle without bumping into anyone, and before they know it, they’ve apparated back to their rainy, faceless London suburb.

 

***

 

To be honest, James had been kind of expecting their first mission to be something rather more— _exciting—_ than spying on random Death Eaters. After all, spying is something he’s been doing with the Marauder folks since they ever knew each other. Towards the end of their Hogwarts careers, spying has become such a mundane practice for them that James found himself constantly interfering with Snape’s next foreseeable meetings with Lily as if it was his second nature: Scattering Snape’s face with acne so he couldn’t show up in front of Lily, putting Snape in detention for something he didn’t do, etcetera.) Looking back, he can sort of admit all of it was a little mean. But after all, who could you blame? Snape was a mean, deranged bloody idiot, end of story.

Anyway, you see this kind of thing wasn’t really what James had been hoping to be able to do. Spying didn’t need authorization by Dumbledore—he already spies everywhere, every chance he gets, and so does Sirius. He would have continued to do it even if weren’t part of the Order’s goddamn ‘mission.’

“Ready?” Sirius says, as he double-checks his pocket for his wand.

James notices that Sirius isn’t too eager, either. He might be a little  _bored,_  in fact.

James sighs. “Uh-huh.” He flings the edges of his invisibility cloak around themselves before they apparate together.

“Shit,” Sirius mumbles audibly the moment they arrive at Knockturn. 

James follows his line of sight to recognize a sturdy little guy a little way away—a little younger than the two of them, not to mention awfully familiar.

“Reg,” Sirius breathes.

“What's he doing here?” James says anxiously.

Sirius ignores him; just yanks hard at James’s arm, itching to get closer. They soon fall into stride a couple steps behind Regulus, who’s currently walking by himself, looking straight ahead—his posture rigid, determined, with a little bundle of nerves somewhere in there.

He halts in front of the doorstep leading to a neat-looking place—sleek, black exterior, complete with a classy “open” sign—and walks in after having finished what looked to be something like a personal ritual for calming down. James and Sirius follow him in quickly before the door slides shut.

Inside is a bar. It seems particularly dark after having stepped in from broad daylight. Oil lamps hang low from the ceiling on heavy chains, the walls and furniture smooth, cold basalt surfaces, all bourgeois. A handful of men and women in suits sit scattered around the small interior, some in pairs and little groups.

James arches his eyebrows at Sirius—he didn’t know such a place existed so close to Diagon. Sirius ignores him yet again.

He tugs painfully on James’s arm and begins moving toward Regulus, who's already taken a seat with a glass of dark-red wine in hand: a high stool at a round table for two.  _For two?_ So he's meeting someone.

Regulus does his best to hide it, but James still catches him gulping. He fumbles with his collar and adjusts his tie to limited success. His fingers may or may not be shaking.

James sees a nearby table with two empty stools close together—close enough for the cloak to hide them both while they sit and wait—and he tugs on Sirius’s sleeve to get his attention, but Sirius still seems to be totally oblivious to his boyfriend. He stands rooted to the spot, gaze fixed on Regulus’s anxious figure from an arm’s reach to the side. James feels antsy; the cloak can hide their appearances, but it can’t hide anything else—a drift of strange odor or a flurry of strange air can easily reveal them. But experience has taught him that he isn’t supposed to force anything on Sirius when he’s in this kind of state.

The doorbell tingles, and James looks just in time to see an impressive woman walk in. She’s got majestically curly black hair cascading down her shoulders toward her rather impressive breasts.  _Pretty hot,_ James notes,  _except around the eyes—_ her eyes look sort of mean. In fact, it’s those eyes that finally remind James of a particular page in the  _Prophet_ from some days ago:  _Devoted Death Eater Bellatrix Black, Daughter of Cygnus Black III and Druella Black, officially engaged to fellow Death Eater and pure-blood Rodolphus Lestrange._

Indeed, her eyes are  _very_  mean.

“Oh, Reg, my baby!” Her voice sickly sweet and soprano as she strides over to Regulus, who’s stood up by now. Regulus smiles thinly, accepting kisses on both cheeks.

“Bella,” he says smoothly, his voice not giving away any of his nerves.“What would you like to drink, hmm, my gorgeous love?”

James looks at Sirius—at a good timing, too—because Sirius is seconds from tearing off the cloak and doing something that would make things go in a horrible direction. James tugs on his sleeve again, and this time, Sirius looks back at him.

For a moment, he can’t move. He hasn’t seen Sirius like this, ever. It’s not anger, it’s not remorse, it’s something close to  _horror—_ James has to keep himself in check so he won’t stumble a few steps backward at just the stunning intensity of it. In a moment, he realizes that it’s not directed at  _James_  himself; it’s rather at the situation, at his recent discovery that his very own brother is in an intimate relationship with the most dangerous person alive—perhaps even more so than the Dark Lord himself.

_Right, Si, let's leave this place._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heya, so how did you like the smut scene? :) Honest comments, please, and also anything you'd like to see added to their colorful sex life or their lives in general, if you have any wonderful ideas xD I'm all ears.


	5. Space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which terrifying and lovely things happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING  
> A little bit of drug abuse here!

 5.

 

“Sirius.”

James watches as Sirius takes in yet another reckless swig of vodka.

“ _Sirius,”_ James says again. His voice is scratchy from disuse over the past how-many-hours. Sirius hasn’t wanted to talk since they got home—more like, since James dragged the both of them home. Sirius hasn’t moved much, either, just sitting there on the couch with his back turned to James and occasionally stomping to the pantry for the next bottle of alcohol.

Sirius tips the glass up-side-down against his parted lips, downing the remaining contents in one go. He blindly reaches for the half-empty bottle on the floor (his _third_ one this night) when it vanishes.

Sirius stands up. His glare is deadly, it makes James squirm inside.

“You’ve had enough,” he says as firmly as possible, stowing away his wand .

 _“You have no fucking right—“_ Sirius starts, looking as if he’s about to hit him. Or hex him. Or both.

James catches himself before he can flinch.

Rather than come at James as expected, though, Sirius abruptly turns on his heel and strides off in the other direction. Toward the front door.

“Hey—where are you going?”

“Out.” Already hitching his coat over his shoulder and grabbing the keys.

“You have any fucking clue what _time_ it is?”

But Sirius is gone.

James doesn’t bother going after him—doesn’t even bother taking out his mirror. _Not my business,_ he keeps repeating to himself. _Not my goddamn problem._

Cursing Sirius, cursing Regulus, cursing everyone who so much as breathes in England including himself, he reaches out mindlessly for the glass which is now tipped sideways on the floor, proceeding to pour himself a drink.

Alcohol burns through his throat and momentarily paralyzes him. Nerves tingling in warning, shutting everything down—he lies down on the floor until everything goes dark and he can’t feel anything anymore.

 

 ***

 

He wakes to the door thundering open.

For a second, he refuses to open his eyes—he doesn’t want to see Sirius just yet. Whatever state he’s in, James knows as much to guess that it’s probably not pleasant. He tries to ignore how very unbalanced and heavy the footsteps sound as they stomp across the living room.

Just then, an earsplitting, spine-jerking _crash_ vibrates from the general direction of the kitchen. James jumps into consciousness.

He sways and struggles to stand up properly, knees buckling in hangover. A hand dragging on the wall, he stumbles into the kitchen to find Sirius bent on the floor on all fours, retching silently. Shards of glass scattered, alcohol spilling over the stone-cold tiles. Hands trembling and slipping, head bowing all the way, entire body jerking as it forces out transparent-looking liquid from a drooling mouth that James really doesn’t want to describe.

After a moment of complete shock, James is slowly filled with a foreign, disgusting hatred. He sees red as he goes over all the options he can do to Sirius, who presently looks the most useless, the most vulnerable that James has ever seen him. He could spit at Sirius, swear at him until his throat goes sore, shove him into a wallover and over until he comes to his senses, and he can’t decide which of those to start with. He wants to sink his foot onto Sirius’s back until his limbs give out and he’s lying there totally powerless on his stomach, choking on his own god-awful vomit.

But the retching, half-heaving sounds are getting at him.

 _I don’t fucking deserve this,_ James rages to himself, as he clears the mess away in one anguished sweep of the wand.

He stomps toward Sirius and yanks violently at the back of his filthy shirt collar, forcing him to meet his eyes.

Merlin help him—his eyes— _his eyes_.

He releases his grip almost immediately.

Stumbling back, knees giving away, breath catching.

_Who is he?_

A startled sob. A silent scream.

_I don’t know him._

_This is not Sirius._

The stranger stands up. Towering, squared shoulders hunching, his eyes the most horrifying pair of eyes James has ever seen—all dark and terrible and _predatory._ Streaks of violent red criss-crossing the whites.

Skin pale, crumbing, scrunched-up parchment. Those skeletal lips parting in confusion.

“S-Sirius?”

James doesn’t want to. He doesn’t mean to back away. He means to—he _has_ to take care of this. Take care of _him,_ whoever he is, whatever happened to him, he _has_ to make sure…

The heel of his foot grazes against the threshold, and he’s already out of the kitchen against his will, putting more and more space in between himself and the nightmare.

_This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening, no, no, no…_

His sweaty palm brushes against his pocket. He remembers his wand.

“ _S-stupefy.”_ It comes out breathless, afraid.

He hasn’t been this stupidly afraid in forever.

 

*** 

 

“Hello?”

“It’s m-me.”

“Jamie, honey? What’s wrong?”

“Sirius… it’s Sirius… he’s…”

“Sweetheart, I’m coming.”

 

*** 

 

His insides have fallen apart to pieces. He can feel nothing, not the warmth from the fireplace when his mother lights it, not the reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry. He’ll be alright.”

Sirius doesn’t look alright. He looks paler than ever, his breaths coming out all too shallowly from his parted mouth. He’s sweating at the temples, too, and James suggests more than once that they should stop the fire.

“It’s not from the heat, Jamie. He needs the heat.”

Mrs. Potter wipes at Sirius’s face with a hot towel, looking like she knows what she’s doing. As if it’s one of those common _fevers,_ as if Sirius doesn’t look like he’s close to _dying._

“What is it?” He tries to keep the desperation out of his voice.

“It must be one of those muggle substances, based on your description. Nothing to worry about. We just need to make sure he won’t touch it again.”

He can’t hold back—he’s sobbing. Thrashing, all wild, stringing out whatever curse word that comes to mind and firing them at Sirius’s motionless body while paying no heed to his mother’s presence, kicking and swinging his fists at every piece of furniture within sight. _You wake the fuck up, you fucking jerk, you disgusting psychopath—_ punching him into a bloody pulp within the walls of his bloodthirsty imagination.

“James, please,” his mother sighs exasperatedly.

It only makes him yell louder.

 _Wake up and face me, you idiot, or I’ll bloody make you apologize._ His mind’s image coming into full, vivid color as his sight blurs further into aggressive tears. _I’ll make you beg for forgiveness._

With that, Sirius jerks awake.

Despite the disgust and fear and overwhelming hatred, James takes a petrified moment to register those eyes. Still bloodshot. But it’s definitely tired-bloodshot this time, not the previous kind—the carnivorous, straight-out-of-a-horror-movie bloodshot.

James gives out a single noise of something like anger and hatred and relief all mixed together and promptly crumples toward the floor.

“Huh? Mrs. Potter? What’s going on—James—” Sirius’s voice is hoarse, as though _he’s_ the one who’s been screaming his head off for the past hour.

“Hush, dear. You’re okay. Relax—”

“Where’s J—?“

“James is safe, dear. He’s here. Going through a bit of a shock… so am I, to be honest… We’re glad you’re safe, Sirius.”

“James…”

James staggers toward the bedroom, stifles it all in his gut and desperately manages out a _Muffliato_ charm before he lets it all out. 

 

 ***

 

“Leave him alone, Sirius,” Mrs. Potter’s voice is uncharacteristically stern.

The knocking stops.

“But I need to—“

“Whatever you have to say to him, it can wait.”

James listens numbly to the muffled conversation, laid down in the floor of the bedroom. His face feels all sticky and gross from sweat and those unstoppable fucking tears. His skin itches on the carpet beneath him—he doesn’t remember when the last time he cleaned the room was. A huge lump in his throat burns every time he swallows.

“He’ll come out when he’s ready.”

Even after a few seconds, James can still somehow feel Sirius’s presence right outside the door. A little warm—but not in the _physical_ sort of way—more like a tingly feeling beneath his skin. Just by this, James knows that Sirius is alive and breathing and currently grappling in remorse within very close distance.

He points his wand at the door, clicking back the lock.

“James, can I come in?”

James doesn’t answer.

“I’m coming in, OK?”

The door opens.

Indeed, Sirius is _very_ alive and breathing, and _very much_ the representation of pure remorse. His eyes are back to light gray, now swimming in guilt and apology. All of James’s weariness seep away into the stuffy air, and he’s once again overcome by fury and the need to just _hurt._

All of a sudden, he’s stood up, awaiting Sirius’s approaching figure.

When he’s just the right distance away, He takes a swing at Sirius’s shoulder. Apart from a shocked gasp, it doesn’t seem to have gotten much of a reaction out of him. So he does it again. Then again, on his chin, on his stomach, his—everywhere, _anywhere_ he can reach.

Sirius doesn’t even complain, doesn’t even yelp in surprise or pain. Only grunts in some places. Facing his front toward James in nothing other than invitation.

“Come on,” he’s muttering under his breath, blow after blow. “Come on, James, more, I deserve more…”

James is suddenly thrown backward. His backbone cracks as it jams into the opposite wall of the bedroom, blackness and pinpricks of stars momentarily blinding him. It takes a second or two to regain his sight and register the slender figure of his mother at the threshold, trembling in a disappointment he hasn’t yet seen in the past nineteen years.

“ _That’s enough.”_ She opens her mouth to add something, but nothing more comes out. Pursing her lips, she spins around and speeds back down the hallway.

James starts shaking. His lips wobble, and before he can catch himself, he’s crying again.

A tentative hand touches his arm, and when James doesn’t react at all to it, it slides gently across to his back, tugging him closer. James struggles to hold back before he abruptly falls apart and into Sirius’s ready arms, shaking violently and sniffling quietly, gulping in the most addicting, most complicated smell in the world that is Sirius; a smell he never could live without.

Sirius rakes a hand through his hair, whispering shakily.

“James, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t know what I was doing…”

“You don’t do this to me—you fucking just _don’t—_ ”

“I know, James, I know… Never…”

“Swear to me.”

“I swear it, James, it won’t happen again. I swear.”

 

*** 

 

This time around, though, James feels as though Sirius has finally gone too far.

 _A needle,_ he’d explained to him. _They call it a syringe. I’ve seen loads of muggle folks doing it when I used to sneak into town back before Hogwarts._

 _But why did you do it?_ James had needed to know everything.

 _Because…_ Sirius had put on a conflicted expression. _It feels… good. It makes youforget bad things for a short period of time. Stupid, of course,_ he’d added hastily at the wary look on James. _You know I’m not touching that stuff again._

And yet, why is James struggling to believe him? James _always_ believes Sirius; he believes _in_ him. Sirius could say he was going to do whatever dumb bloody thing he just came up with, just for a dare, and James would instantly believe him…usually.

So why is it different tonight? This time around, it feels like there’s some kind of funny _space_ between his and Sirius’s minds, one that has rarely existed before. James just can’t _understand_ Sirius, is the problem here. Why Sirius felt the need to take ‘a few harmless shots’ to deal with the Regulus Revelation when he could have just run into James’s more-than-welcoming arms and wept and let it all out like a normal person. Did he not trust James to that extent? If this was the case, then it will mean that James had had the wrong idea for the whole time. If they couldn’t trust each other fully and completely, why were they dating? Why were they even best mates?

And, anyway, ‘a few harmless shots?’ Was Sirius kidding him? He wasn’t _there_ when he was in his little coma while James was moping around, grabbing at his shoulders and screaming his name over and over when he didn’t come to right after the Stupefy hex lifted. He wasn’t _there_ when James rushed to the floo, blinking away panicked tears as he struggled to explain the situation to his mother. Just remembering all that is pure heartache and so much blinding fear that it doesn’t fail to wobble James’s legs, make him want to cry all over again.

Sirius sees it all on James’s face, his own face crumpling.

“Look, I don’t expect you to forgive me right away.”

“You bloody well shouldn’t.”

Sirius nods, sighs.

“I just—but I—I’ll make it up to you, alright? I promise, James— _I promise.”_

 _“How?”_ says James incredulously.

“I—I haven’t figured that out yet,” Sirius licks his lips. “For one, though, I can fix dinner every night for the next couple weeks, yeah? You know, it’ll put my mind off more dangerous things. So what do you want for tonight?”

Somehow, though, James doesn’t get the feeling that _dinner_ is going to fix anything.

“I’m not hungry,” he mumbles, which he really isn’t. Food is the last thing on his mind. “I’m off to bed.”

“Al-alright,” Sirius says, disappointment clear. “I’ll kip on the couch tonight, yeah? If you—want some space, I mean—”

“I don’t care, whatever.”

 

*** 

 

James drifts in and out of sleep so many times the next morning that it’s almost noon when he finally rolls himself out of bed. He’s still weary from last night that it takes a second to register that the space beside him on the bed is untouched. Meaning that Sirius indeed slept downstairs.

As he approaches the kitchen, a feminine voice startles him. “This is really good, Sirius.”

A chuckle. “I get that a lot, but thank you.”

“I mean, _really_ good.”

“ _Mom?_ Why are you still here?” says James, completely ignoring Sirius’s “morning, Jamie.”

 _Tut-tut,_ Mrs. Potter clicks her tongue, turning around to face him challengingly.

“Why, is it so wrong to have your very own mother stay at your house?” She takes another giant mouthful of Sirius’s scrambled eggs. “Sirius here let me use the guest room last night.”

James catches her smiling at Sirius. Sirius returns it politely.

“Wow, honestly—“ James absentmindedly messes up his own hair. “And _I’m_ supposed to be your son.”

His mom opens her mouth to say something, but Sirius pipes in first. “Jamie, I’ve saved some eggs for you,” he says tentatively.

“I don’t want your goddamn eggs.”

“ _James—“_

“It’s alright,” Sirius says quickly. He sounds a tad heartbroken. “I’m leaving it in the fridge just in case you’ll want them later.”

 

 ***

 

“ _Get a grip on yourself.”_

Mrs. Potter rounds on James as soon as Sirius leaves “for a meeting.” ( _As if James was ever uninvited to something Sirius was._ )

“Whoa, Mom, you think this is fair? You’d forgive Sirius for taking those—drugs or whatever they’re called—and you won’t forgive me for being mad at him?”

“Sirius _apologized,_ honey. I never took you for the kind who can’t forgive. I don’t remember raising you like this.”

James begins a retort but his mom cuts him off, raising her voice. “You even had to _physically_ fight him yesterday. I tried to heal all those bruises this morning but he kept on brushing away my wand—he kept saying, ‘ _I deserve all of them, Mrs. Potter, I deserve all of them, I want to keep them on as a reminder of what I did…!_ ’” She’s close to tears by now. “I was absolutely _shocked_ to see so many bruises on his arms, and god knows how many more were hidden under his shirt! So, you tell me, James Potter. Exactly _why_ can’t you forgive him?”

 

*** 

 

“Sirius, dear!”

By the time Sirius comes back, James’s mom _still_ hasn’t left. It’s becoming really hard ignoring her constant chiding. So hard, in fact, that James at one point had had no choice but to fill his stomach in with Sirius’s scrambled eggs just for a distraction—after all, those eggs serve as a good one. Even Snape would admit it.

“Hello,” Sirius says brightly.

James doesn’t miss the moment his gaze flickers over to him, the way he’s clearly let down to see James’s hard expression that hasn’t changed since last night.

The next moment, however, Sirius has once again plastered on a grin. “I found the best artichokes at the market, Mrs. Potter—they’ll be an excellent topping for the pizza. Only if you’d like them, of course—“

“Of course, of course, I’d love that!” Mrs. Potter jumps up and down excitedly. Sirius laughs.

James could disappear and neither of them would notice.

 

 ***

 

The artichoke pizza turns out to be alright. Okay, maybe _more_ than alright. Which must be why James feels like walking up to Sirius after Mrs. Potter has retreated to her room is not so bad an idea. He stands there with his hands on his hips in front of where Sirius is lounged on the couch.

Sirius looks up from the _Prophet_ cautiously. “James?”

“Take off your shirt.”

Sirius’s eyebrows skyrocket.

“Not for _that,_ you perv.”

Bewildered, Sirius obliges.

Yeah, the bruises are actually, objectively pretty bad; Mrs. Potter hadn’t been exaggerating too much. A few black spots here and there, and a huge, blooming one in the left-center of his chest that looks to be growing bigger and blacker by the second.

Wordlessly, James begins healing them away. He works on the bad one on the chest first, and then continues with the ones around it. After a minute or two, Sirius’s entire torso looks as spotless as ever—notwithstanding the faint belt-lashes from his childhood, that is.

When he’s done, he looks up to see Sirius staring at him.

“You didn’t have to—“

“I bloody _know_ I didn’t have to do it. You didn’t want me to do it, right? I mean you would have healed them yourself if you wanted,” James’s mouth is inflamed, words gushing out of it like they wouldn’t stop if the world was ending. “But no, attention-seeking maniac that you are, you wanted all of them _there on display_ to get my fucking _mother_ on your side—“

“Pardon?! _”_

“—But my mom is always going to be _my mom,_ Sirius. She won’t be _yours_ no matter how many fucking injuries you’ve got to show her to buy her _sympathies,_ so you better _—“_

“I wasn’t ‘ _buying her sympathies!’”_ Sirius says, unnerved. “What have my bruises got to do with your _mom?_ ”

“Just. Never mind.” James smacks a palm on his forehead, getting up to leave.

“Well, James—“ Sirius starts, raising his own voice. “Just so you know, I’m not on the mission with you anymore; you’re continuing it with Lily Evans from tomorrow. I’ll be on a different one.”

James spins on his heel to look at him. Sirius’s jaw is set, confusion and bewilderment completely replaced with a placid sort of indifference.

James gapes. “You— _what?_ Exactly who got to decide _that?_ ”

“Dumbledore. Talked to him today.”

“But— _why?”_

“Because obviously I won’t be able to keep a clear head when I’m tagging my brother around. And besides...“ Sirius trails off.

“What?”

“I don’t know. Just…” Sirius droops his shoulders, sitting back and bringing the prophet up to cover his face. “Don’t you think we could both benefit from…some space? Well—not really _space,_ per se, but…”

 

 ***

 

“Long time no see,” is how James greets Lily when they meet up in a dingy part of London.

“James Potter,” Lily smiles, and stands on her toes to give his cheek a small peck.

Fifth-year James would have _died_ for that one short kiss. But now, his face only goes slightly hot.

“Happy to see me, are you?” he smirks.

He’s surprised to see Lily smile even wider.

He holds out his arm for her to take it, already conjuring up the clearest possible image of where Diagon Alley meets Knockturn Alley. The picture in his head falters though, when a girl’s—lady’s—cool, slender fingers close around way too closer to his wrist than he was expecting. So close that, if James turned his wrist the other way,their palms would slide together. Essentially, they would _hold hands._

It takes him a second longer than usual to apparate.

 

*** 

 

“Sirius? How was your mission?”

“Oh, so you’re talking to me now?”

“Fine, then. Be like that.”

Sirius grunts. From this angle, James barely catches him reaching for the gin on the top cabinet.

“Don’t. Drink.”

“Oh, _Prongs._ I’m not a fucking alcoholic.”

“You’re acting like one.”

“I was reaching for this, you obsessive _stag_.” Sirius says irritatedly, flailing a can of Diet Coke wildly as though he’s trying to snap James out of a daydream.

It’s James’s turn to grunt.

“Will it be too much for me to ask you what you’d like for dinner?” Sirius tone suggests that he’d rather shag his own brother than be all house-elfy for James at the moment.

“I already had dinner.” James dead-pans, carrying himself up the stairs. _“With Lily,”_ he doesn’t forget to add.

 

*** 

 

If it isn’t for the crinkled up sheets and the dented pillow beside him, James couldn’t even guess for the world that Sirius is sleeping in the same bed.

Whatever his new important _mission_ is, it’s consuming Sirius’s time like James’s mother consumes Sirius’s scrambled eggs. He goes to bed who-knows-how-many-hours later than James, and he’s gone by the time James wakes. On many nights, James can’t even stay awake until he gets back home, retreating to the cold, crispy sheets at some point in the night, rubbing his eyes. Not that he wants to _talk_ to Sirius, or even _look_ at him for more than two seconds—he just wants to catch him before he drinks himself to death, or do something else as equally stupid like go hunt for one of those muggle stuff again.

 

 ***

 

The only person who seems to care about him these days is funnily the least expected one of all. It’s not Sirius, since James doesn’t even see him most of the time despite living under the same roof. It’s not his mother, which was pretty clear when she last visited. It’s not Remus or Peter—he can’t even remember the exact date he saw them last. They’re busy with their own little missions (yes, even _Peter_ was given a mission a while ago) and hell if James wasn’t. As much as he cares about Remus, he’s also dreading the next moon, which is fast approaching. It would be pretty exhausting, even for him; he’d have a full day of his mission with Lily on that day and on the next. So it’s not Sirius, Remus, Peter, or his mother. Which leaves Lily Evans. 

A smile blooms across her pink cheeks, so completely at odds with their fishy surroundings that James just sort of stands there hypnotized for a few seconds until he realizes he’s being asked a question.

“Oh—yeah—well, not really. We don’t see much of each other these days.”

“Oh,” Lily shows a funny pout. “Well, why not?”

“Well, for one, we’re on different missions. I don’t know what the hell his job is, but he comes home real late most days and leaves the house at the crack of dawn, more or less.”

“Oh…But why?”

“Huh? What do you mean, ‘why?’ I just told you, Lils, I don’t know what he’s doing.”

Lily’s eyelashes flutter at his use of her nickname. James thinks she snuggles up even closer against him beneath the Cloak.

“I know,” she whispers. “That’s what I meant. Why do you not know what his mission is? Don’t you two tell each other literally everything?”

“Oh—yeah. Yeah, we do. It’s just. It’s confidential, probably.” Not that confidentiality ever came in between them, but he wasn’t about to tell Lily _that._

Anyway, she probably got the gist of it, because all she responds with is, “oh.”

A Death Eater appears from around the corner at the best timing.

 

 ***

 

There finally comes a night when James is actually conscious at the time Sirius slips into bed. He’d been so exhausted the night before that he’d skipped dinner and headed straight for bed. Now, after his eyes snap open in the middle of the night, his stomach is not shutting up, and he’s trying to force in a couple more hours of precious sleep in vain.

“Sirius?”

“James? You’re awake?”

“Mm.”

His belly does the explaining.

Sirius laughs. Gosh, how in the wizarding world has James _not_ missed that laugh? He immediately feels light as a feather at the sound of it, and before he knows it, he’s laughing uncontrollably.

“James?!”

James tries to smother his laughter into the front of Sirius’s shirt. He smells Sirius, then, and he just lets himself smell him for a few long breaths.

“Si? Will you grab me some food?” He mumbles after a while.

Sirius hums contentedly. James realizes it’s the first time in weeks he’s called him anything other than _‘Sirius.’_ Even though ‘Si’ is only short for his real name—he wouldn’t even consider it a nickname.

Then Sirius is wrapping himself around him, tucking James’s face into his warm, soft neck. He presses his nose against James’s hair and breathes deeply. Now _this_ , he’s _definitely_ missed.

“Go back to sleep,” Sirius murmurs into his hairline. “I’ll have breakfast with you tomorrow; I’ve got the morning off.”

“You have?”

“Mm.”

“Well, bugger. I haven't.”

“That's OK.”

He thinks Sirius has gone to sleep, but then his belly grumbles again and Sirius gives out a snort.

“‘M hungry. Padfoot.”

Sirius chuckles sleepily, palm sliding toward James’s stomach over his pajama. That’s all it takes for the hunger to ebb away.

 

 ***

 

The alarm blares, but frankly, it doesn’t sound half as annoying once he opens his eyes and sees Sirius yawning right beside him.

James rolls into him, clawing at his pajama and stopping him from getting up. The alarm stops ringing after a second, and he feels his eyes instantly closing.

“And I thought _you_ wanted to hurry up and eat.”

How bloody much he’s missed this.

But then James opens his eyes again, and he sees Sirius staring back at him, heavy-looking bags under those eyes.

“Go back to sleep,” says James, frowning.

“What? No, no,” Sirius shakes his head. To make a show of it, he even detaches himself from James’s clutch, getting up to rummage around for a clean pair of socks.

“We’ve got eggs..." he muses. "But god knows we’re both sick and tired of scrambled eggs by now. I could give the omelet a try though… put some of the spinach in. And, oh yeah, you love those sausages; I could include them as well… Hell, maybe you just want pancakes once in a while. Would you want that, Jamie?”

James is scratching at his head, barely sitting up against the headboard and trying to focus on whatever Sirius is blabbering about.

“Jamie?” Sirius repeats, smiling properly at him.

“Huh?”

“Do you want pancakes?”

Pancakes. Sirius’s pancakes. James can already _smell_ them.

“Uh-huh. Yeah. Sure.”

James sits on the table as he watches Sirius prepare breakfast. He’s fully awake by now, switched completely onto his usual babbling mode.

“Why do you put so much milk in the mixture, Pads? Wouldn’t it go all runny? I like the tougher, chewy pancakes more than the softer ones, you know what I’m talking about? By the way, did you know that Lils liked pancakes so much, Si? I didn’t know that until the other day she suggested we go to a pancake place for dinner! Now, if _that_ wasn’t totally absurd—“

“What?”

“I know right, she’s obsessed with pancakes, Lils is.”

_“Lils?”_

“Lily. I meant Lily.”

Sirius finishes pouring in the mixture. The pan sizzles cooly. Sirius glances behind him to look at James strangely.

James smiles, a little confused. The sizzling gets louder.

“Padfoots, I know you’re the expert here and all, but--it’s _sizzling._ Don’t you have to flip it or something?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soz for the slow updates! 
> 
> Keep an eye open for the next one though, cause it's sure as hell gonna be interesting... ;P
> 
> Also, I'm sorry if the symptoms from Sirius's drug use came off as a bit vague/sketchy. I'm not the world's most knowledgable person regarding this topic. 
> 
> On a final note,
> 
> DON'T DO DRUGS.


	6. Antagonism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, this is very very late, I'm soooo sorry guys. I truly am.

6. 

 

At first, it had been a little lonely going on missions with Lily. Sure, Lily is amazing; she’s sweet, lovely, and all James could have asked for in a parter that wasn’t Sirius, and by now, James is convinced that Lily is developing a little bit of a crush on him. Something that would have meant the world to him only a few years ago. Yet he’s surprised to find himself not even remotely amused, or a little boastful. In fact, if he were to be honest, he’d say he’s finding it a little bit of an inconvenience. Lily liking him means that he needs to treat her extra gently—even _manly_. And Lily’s forever-sweetness only reminds him of who he’d rather be treated sweetly by.

 _This is all Sirius’s fault,_ the thought is not new to him. The immediate counter-thought of _Don’t think that way; Lily hasn’t done anything wrong_ is also not new. Every time he puts on a flashy, handsome smile in response to Lily’s, he shivers with an instinctive sort of repulsion. Lily is _too_ sweet. Her perfume _too_ flowery, her voice too high, her laugh too much.

This must be why James has to have a go at Sirius one night, after he’s had weeks, hell, actually over a _month,_ of this Lily business.

“So what’s going on with you?”

Of course he’s not going to talk about Lily. He’s going to make all of this about Sirius, since he’s still got his own ego, thanks. He’d rather be held hostage by Bellatrix Black than let Sirius know that he’s not enjoying Lily’s attraction to him, when he used to claim it to be his entire life’s purpose.

“What d’you mean?”

Sirius is throwing on his pajamas, his voice muffled by a thick layer of wool. They haven’t had sex in a long while. James _wants_ to, but for the time being, he resists. He does whatever he has to in the sheets all alone when he wakes up without Sirius beside him, or in his cold morning showers he now takes alone, but he doesn’t force anything in between themselves when everything just seems so vulnerable.

James starts talking. “I mean your _mission_. You never told me what you were doing, why you’re leaving so early every morning, why you’re coming home so late in the evening—“

“Hey, I came home pretty early tonight didn’t I?”

“Shit, that’s not the point!”

“Then what is?”

“You _know_ what I’m talking about _._ You _know.”_

James pushes himself off the bed to sit up, rakes anguished fingers through his hair.

Sirius hasn’t answered. He’s fully dressed now, wooly pajamas hugging his exhausted form. He pleads with his eyes: _James, not now, I’m tired…_

But James won’t have it. Not when he’s been patient for _this_ long, worried sick for this long.

 _“_ You know how long I’ve waited for you to talk to me about this first? You know how—fucking— _frustrated_ I am about you and this secretive business? You know how—you know I—“

Shit. He’d been plotting out this conversation for the entire night. _Crying_ was never part of the plan.

“James, I’m really sorry, but can we talk about this—“

“ _Now._ We are talking about this _now,_ Sirius! Merlin knows the next time I’m seeing you awake is when _hell freezes over!_ ”

But Sirius seems resolved.

“I don’t need you sticking your nose into what’s my business, James, I really don’t. It would only bother you and—“

James clambers up onto his knees. His legs wobble against the bedsprings.

“Bother me? _Bother me? FUCK, DO YOU THINK I CARE?_ ” The lamplight flickers dangerously from his unconscious magic. “What do you mean by _bother me,_ Sirius? ‘Cause that’s what I want. I want you to bother me, I want to know what you’ve been up to this whole past month, for weeks and weeks, I want to make sure that you’re—I need to—“

James is suddenly assaulted with flashes of recurrent nightmares, so many and so vivid that it makes his inner eyes cross over: _Sirius injured, Sirius captured, Sirius in hostage… Sirius dead…_ Cold, hand-written letters carried by wailing owls, dysfunctional healers at St. Mungo’s…

“James?” Sirius has climbed onto the bed, peering into James’s face cautiously.

James scratches at his head again. Strands of hair fall into his eyes and he angrily shakes them away.

“Fuck. Never mind. Just, tell me, won’t you? Tell me.”

Sirius fucking _hesitates._

“Sirius,” James wants to sound angry, authoritative, and yet his voice comes off quite shaky. _“Please.”_ He’s positively whining by now, and if he doesn’t feel even slightly embarrassed, it’s really saying something about the situation.

Sirius doesn’t look so guarded anymore. Instead, he sighs and looks down at the sheets as he climbs into bed.

“Look. I’m sorry that I—I have to do this to you—but I _can’t—_ ”

“ _THEN LEAVE!_ ”

“W-what?”

Sirius’s mouth gapes in shock. His next words come out frail and desperate. “No, you can’t do this, James—I can’t…”

“Which is it, Sirius?” James pushes. “Come on, _baby,_ you get to decide here, I’m giving—

“But—“

“—you a choice. Talk, or—”

“—I’m not _leaving,_ James, what are you—“

“Then _talk,_ Sirius. Talk to me.”

James waits.

He waits, and he expects.

What James is expecting, at this point, is maybe a shaky Sirius kneeling on the bed and repeating the words ‘sorry’ and ‘I’ll talk, just please listen,’ or maybe, it’s Sirius jumping up from the bed and yelling, ‘it’s not that easy!’ or ‘I can’t!’ or some shit. Or maybe it’s Sirius crashing him into a bear hug, sobbing, shocked and disoriented.

What James _isn’t_ expecting is Sirius actually leaving.

 

***

 

“Sirius.”

Just once, he calls his name out loud.

“I didn’t mean it.”

But this time, it’s not like all those other times they’ve fought, where afterwards either of them would be all “ _Sirius Sirius Sirius”_ or “ _James James James,”_ “please come back” and “we can fix it.”

This time, James says “I didn’t mean it” and immediately wonders, _but really?_ Or was there a part of him that, rather than keep trying and keep failing to communicate with Sirius, that he actually—shit—actually _wanted_ him to leave?

James tears the thought off. 

So he only tries once. One “Sirius,” no response, and that’s it. It’s the loneliest, scariest night he’s had to endure so far, and his body wants so badly to sleep but his mind fights it off, fearing what curses and dead people would be awaiting him.

 

 

 

“James?”

Lily’s voice is sweet as usual, innocent as the first warm breeze of Spring, but all James can wonder, for the hundredth time, is how different it sounds when it’s Sirius calling his name.

“Yeah?”

“What’s wrong?” It’s the twelfth or thirteenth consecutive day that Lily’s asked him this.

“Nothing.” His usual response.

Of course it’s obvious that it isn’t ‘nothing.’ James hasn’t showered this morning and consequently, he knows his hair is sticking up more than usual, like a freak. He hasn’t checked himself consciously in the mirror for _weeks,_ and god (and Lily) knows how he actually looks like presently. He must look like the live representation of hell.

“James, you know you can tell me anything, right?”

On the rare occasion that James felt like holding something back from Sirius (including those heart-aching months when James was desperately trying to hide a crush) he would hear that exact line read by Sirius’s lips. _James, you know you can tell me anything, right?_ It’s Lily today, and it will be Lily tomorrow, and then the day after. James wonders when it’ll be Sirius again, if it’ll _ever_ be him again.

“Yeah. I know. Thanks, Lils.”

The day passes by in a haze. James is dizzy by the time they sit down at the bar—something that’s turned into a routine every night after a mission.

“James? Did you want to call it off tonight?”

“Sorry, whazzat?”

“I was just wondering if… you maybe wanted to get home early tonight. You look like you could do with some sleep, James, you look so tired.”

“Oh, thaz nothing, Lils. I’m good.”

Frankly, James needs the distraction. The past few weeks, he’s been crippled by nausea and nightmares: every waking moment he’s dreading the all the worst things that can happen to Sirius, that _can be happening_ to Sirius right as he’s strolling around with Lily oblivious, and every sleeping moment, all those scenarios he’s dreading so much come to life. He doesn’t know which he hates more, the constant worrying or the giving up. The sense of panicked unpredictability or the sense of utter, bottomless loss.

“James…”

“Mm?”

“If you’re—“

James hasn’t seen Lily blush so furiously before. Her sentence is cut short, her pupils suddenly traveling sideways, all jumpy and nervous, and James wonders what in the world could have made someone alert after such an exhausting twelve hours of spying and holding their breath in the shadows.

“What is it?” James prods, gently.

“I mean—don’t take this the wrong way, but—“ Lily looks up. She blinks, presses and curls her lips inward before parting them again. “Why don’t you come stay at mine tonight?”

James doesn’t think he’s heard right. “Sorry—what?”

“James,” Lily almost-stutters, “I don’t know what’s been going on in your—er— _personal life_ these days, but you definitely don’t look very happy. You clearly haven’t been taking much care of yourself, and you look like a lost puppy or something, I don’t know, and maybe you can—use some company, you know? I mean, I know you have Sirius, but like you said—“

“Sirius left me.” James says it so abruptly that it surprises even himself. He just said it out loud. It’s official.

“Oh—I—what?” Lily definitely stutters this time. Her blinking goes faster than ever. “H-he—he did?” she whispers.

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh—I’m—I’m so sorry.”

No ‘he’ll come around,’ no ‘don’t worry.’ Lily Evans doesn’t lie and she doesn’t sugarcoat, and that had been one of the factors why he had decided he liked her back in second year.

The next five minutes or so, they sit and drink hard alcohol in silence. James has long since forgotten Lily’s initial request.

Then Lily finishes her drink, sets it down on her side of their small, intimate round table.

“So… what do you say, James?”

“What?”

“You know… would you fancy staying at my flat for the night? I’ve-got-a-spare-room.” She adds the last bit in a rush.

“Oh…”

It would be nice. It would sure be pleasant. Lily Evans… James bets her entire flat smells like that sweet, dreamy rosemary perfume. Or lavender. Or whatever the hell it is. He bets it’ll be full of flowers stuck in vases, landscape paintings hung on walls. An organized kitchen, a clean bedroom, and washed sheets. Sheets that don’t smell like cold sweat and imaginary dead bodies and late-night arguments and _Sirius._

James smiles genuinely.

“Thanks for the offer, Lily. But… I’m alright. I really am.” _I love Sirius._ James almost blurts that bit out.

Lily swallows visibly. 

“Okay. If you say so,” she smiles uncertainly.

“I do. I really appreciate it, though, Lils. It means a lot.”

It really does.

Lily’s smile remains guarded, somewhat sad.

James clears his throat. “Say, you wanna call it a night?”

“Yeah, okay.” Her voice is barely audible.

James is suddenly consumed by a maddening sense of guilt. _This Lils, this lovely, fairy-like too-good Lily, is suffering from being rejected by a guy she genuinely thought needed help and whom she wanted to help, which also happened to be a guy who used to claim had a lifelong crush on herself, and that guy—that guy was James?_

What is he to do?

Before Lily can get up from her seat, James stands up and leans across the table. He barely catches her eyelashes flutter before his lips have reached her forehead. He presses them there, a sweet, short kiss to match her own everlasting kindness. She smells—or rather, tastes? James can’t decide which—of light rain, of rosy margarita, and a distant hint of the Hogwarts greenhouses.

_Thanks._

When he leans back, he can already see a smile starting to tug itself on Lily’s lips, and he takes a short, relieved breath. Lily shakes her head a little, sending shocks of red hair ripple around her shoulders. James has always thought her hair was lovely.

Just then, he catches something just off the top of Lily’s head. Even being feet away from the windows, and even with the windows obscured with thick drops of condensation, he could make out that figure anywhere. A dog. A big, black, particularly angry-looking dog.

James scrambles up from his stool.

“What the actual fuck,” he breathes.

Noting the sudden change in James’s expression, Lily turns around to look behind her.

“Doggy! A _big_ one, too,” Lily chuckles softly, frowning a little at James. “Well, why does it look so… it’s _baring_ its teeth at me, James, why does it look like it wants to kill me?”

“He doesn’t want to kill you. He wants to kill _me_ ,” it slides smoothly out of James’s lips without warning.

“What? Kill you?” Lily says, startled. “ _He?_ What do you mean, _he?_ You recognize this dog?”

James snaps back into reality.

“No,” he says after a while. “Let’s just get home, alright? Walk you home.”

He hopes it doesn’t sound too forceful, too strange.

 _I love Sirius._ The words sound so very old in his head, like it's from a novel he's read, not from his own past life. How far back was the last time he said it out loud, to Sirius?

 

***

 

“Sirius.”

The name tastes foreign in his mouth, a little sour, remotely bitter, a memory of an addiction he desperately wants to keep away from.

“S-“

He almost says it again. He almost calls him a second time, and he realizes just how stupid he really is.

‘ _Jamie, you’re just so stupid.’_ Sirius’s ancient Happy Voice rings in his head like a Christmas carol in the dreary middle of February. It used to be one of his absolute favorite lines to say, that one. _Jamie, you’re just so stupid._

Then James would be faux-offended, and Sirius would cackle with delight, then one thing would lead to another and soon they’d be full-on making out.

James can’t stand it anymore. His fists clenched in his pockets against the cold, his feet shuffle him home. The shock fades away within a matter of minutes into the usual bitterness—nothing he’s not used to by now—and by the time he reaches the front door, his mirror is already stuffed back deep into his pocket, almost-forgotten.

 

***

 

The next day is one of those rare day-offs, and he’s got no one to spend it with. Disregarding the manner that Lily was hinting—admittedly heavily—that they should hang out together, James wonders how he’s gotten from the trophy guy of the entire school school to completely friendless and utterly alone in a matter of a few months.

“Well, coincidence? I say not,” Remus smiles coolly as James nudges his way through the front door.

“What coincidence?” James grunts.

“Your—ah— _counterpart_ was seen in this exact location—“ Remus waves a hand toward the doormat—“approximately two hours from the present.”

“Sirius?” James says quickly.

“Correct. Now—are you coming in? Or are you actually waiting for me to _invite you in?_ ”

Annoyed, James pushes his way into the living room.

“What did he want?” he demands as soon as he’s slumped onto a kitchen chair.

As Remus-like as ever, a teacup lands on the table in front of him. A string of white steam floats upward from the hot tea, dissolving into nothing a few inches up. James stares at it.

His companion sits down at the opposite end, and begins.

“Once upon a time, there was a rather distressed, exhausted looking young man standing on the doormat of a werewolf’s flat. The werewolf smiles at him warmly, confused, and asks, ’to what do I owe this plea—”

“ _Remus_.” James warns. His hand is already shaking against the ring of the teacup, sending precarious ripples into the hot liquid inside.

Remus ignores him.

“—sure?’ The werewolf politely waits for a response. However, the man says nothing, and the werewolf begins to wonder if his speech is perhaps impaired. The only thing the man does before he has disapparated is to place—rather bluntly, I may add—a disturbing shard of glass into the hand of the befuddled werewolf.”

“Remus. Cut it out,” James just about screams.

Remus smiles at him. It’s when he registers the oddness of the smile that James realizes it.

“Hang on—did you say—shard of glass?”

Remus’s smile widens. It’s a glaringly sarcastic smile and it drives James near-mad.

“As a matter of fact, I did,” says Remus calmly, and proceeds to take out Sirius’s mirror from his inside pocket.

James feels as if his intestines twist together.

“ _Give it here right now_ ,” he grits out.

“No.” Remus twiddles the jagged glass in between his thumbs.

“ _Give it!”_

Remus sighs. “ _No_ , James. First, you at least owe me an—“

But James doesn’t let him finish; he’s jumped onto the table and laid flat on his stomach atop of it, balancing on his middle as he makes a go for the mirror in Remus’s hands. Both of their tea cups crash toward the floor, a wince-inducing shatter of concrete against porcelain.

Remus is, of course, too quick for him. The mirror has disappeared back into his pocket. James even gets disarmed for it. He glares and fumes as he observes his wand joining the mirror. 

“Give it to me. It’s not yours!”

“It’s not yours, either.”

“My wand! It’s _my_ wand!”

“You weren’t talking about your wand and you know it.”

“Fuck you!” James retorts, a sign of defeat if there ever was one.

Abruptly, he gets up and makes his way toward the kitchen. He makes a point not to stagger when his toe lands on a grain of broken porcelain.

“Prongs. Where the fuck are you going, clean up this mess!” Remus yells.

James ignores him and starts opening the overhead cabinets, one by one, exposing any and all contents, scanning them with a poisonous determination. 

“What the fuck, James.” Remus says, having made his own way into the kitchen. “Stop what you’re doing, right now.”

“Great. Good ol’ Ramsbury. Nice. Oh, and look, you’ve got Graveney as well! You're a fucking _alcoholic,_ you are, Moony, when did you even start developing such taste in Muggle gin?” James laughes hysterically. 

 

***

 

If you asked James why he’s been crashing at Remus’s flat ever since, he wouldn’t be able to answer. But it did start off with James throwing up all over Moony’s living room rug and falling unconscious in his own vomit soon thereafter. The next morning, an appalled, disgusted Remus shook James awake and coerced him to clean everything the muggle way—from scrubbing the rug with soap to collecting teacup shards with his very own precious fingers—otherwise his wand wouldn’t be returned. At this point, James had been ready to do almost anything if it meant distracting himself from a thousand chest-squeezing thoughts of Sirius and the fucking _mirror._

_Why would he give away his mirror?_

Scrub. Scrub, scrub.

_How could he?_

Splash, splash.

_How dare he?_

As for the following number of nights, though, James can’t really tell why he’s been unable to go back to his own house. Remus hasn’t exactly _told_ him to go, but he’s implied it enough times, what with those cold smiles and hurry-up-and-get-your-shit-together eye-rolls. James did, in fact, go back once—not to move back in, but to gather a bundle of clothes as wearing the same clothes was getting a bit gross—but everything about the ordeal overwhelmed him.

For the past week or two, all James has been smelling is his own house—his and Sirius’s house. The wooden, snuggly, wooly smell of Sirius and he cuddling up in bed or watching muggle TV by the fireplace, the mirthful banter by day, the unspoken fears and reassurances by night. He can smell it all in his clothes, on his own skin, in his memories from just when the rain was turning into snow.

He stares morosely at the scattered footprints of strangers in the now foot-thick sheet of snow laid before him, barely listening to Lily’s chatter. He stares out the window at the faceless, boring heaps of white from Remus’s kitchen as he lazily prepares himself dinner—he stopped trying to prepare food for Remus when he realized he barely ate when he got home; he got straight to bed.  James lies awake at night, rubbing at his eyes and force-yawning and purposefully not casting _Muffliato_ in hopes that the Muggle music drifting from Remus’s neighbor would somehow lull him to sleep.

In these moments, he reaches out for his mirror on the bed-side table out of instinct before he remembers himself. _Sirius—_ the name slips out audibly before he remembers. All the frustration and loneliness and the sheer need to talk threaten to follow immediately after: _It’s nothing with Lily, I don’t feel anything for her, please come back, I need to talk to you…_ Lines and lines and lines of explanation repeating themselves in his head until they blend into monotone, into unconsciousness. Into restless sleep.

 

***

 

He’s walking along Knockturn with Lily again for the umpteenth time, when Lily suddenly halts her one-way chatter to look at James.

It takes an extra step or two for him to notice that she isn’t keeping up.

“James.”

“Huh?”

“It’s Sirius.“

James could have spun on top of a sneakoscope, his reaction is so quick. Lily’s right, it _is_ Sirius, but he wants to know how in the world she recognized him, because Sirius Black is currently in an entirely foreign context.

James sees him a couple yards away, balancing on the edge of the sidewalk and resting his elbow carelessly on his brother’s shoulder. His _brother_ —Regulus Black— and sure enough, that frizzy Bellatrix Black is right beside him. There’s a few others hoarding around them, too, youngster aspiring Death Eaters, the kind who wear their gangster masks around Knockturn just for fun. All in all, James is so shocked and so appalled that he’s literally petrified to the ground. That is, until Lily pulls on his hand and drags the both of them closer to the lot.

“What the fuck,” James finally manages out.

“James, we have to—this is our chance—“

“ _What chance?_ ” He goes hot all of a sudden, a coarse anger rippling under his skin.

“Nothing, James, just be quiet. We should find out what they’re up to.”

James stops in his tracks again, eyebrows knitted so hard his facial muscles clench.

“What?”

“James, come on—look, they’re already walking away—“

“What do you think they’re _up_ to, Lily, you think Sirius is 'up to' something? This is Sirius we’re talking about, Lily, you know who Sirius is, right?”

Lily looks more than just a bit pissed now. James has seen Lily’s pissed face all too many times in school. _No, James Potter, I will not go out with you however many times you ask—_ and it makes him wince.

“Of _course_ I know who Black is, thanks!”

James can’t help his voice getting louder by the second. “ _Sirius,_ Lily, Sirius, not Black, he doesn’t like being called _Black—“_

“Whatever, James!" Lily talks over him. "Just, can we please _move_!”

It’s too late when they both simultaneously realize they might have been a bit loud. Lily comes to herself a millisecond before he does, too, already half-expecting what he finds a few paces down the street.

“ _Revelio!”_ A screechy witch’s voice.

And that’s it. Their cloak flies off their shoulders. James’s hand that had been pulled on by Lily is now limp in her hand, and he can’t help but notice how Sirius’s cold, faintly amused gaze travel toward their linked hands, making his eyes narrow even more.

James lets go.

“Well, _well,”_ Bellatrix begins, dramatically. “Who do we have here? Should we start with introductions?”

Her ensuing cackle of laughter is so insanely high-pitched James’s shoulders hitch up a bit.

“Yeah, I’ll start with mine,” James drawls. Lily looks at him, startled, mortally afraid.

James ignores her. “Name’s Potter, this is my partner, Lily Evans. We were just walking down Diagon Alley, you know, must have taken a wrong turn somewhere because suddenly we end up at this funny-looking alley, right, and it’s all dingy and damp you know, filthy like you’d expect there to be lots of rats and the human equivalent of ‘em, if you get what I’m talking a—“

Bellatrix’s expression morphs from delight into anger so clearly it’s like seeing one of those Muggle movie stars, but in real life. James is about to laugh, when the _Crucio_ spell hits him, and laughing is the last thing on his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As long as the intervals between updates may be, I can assure you - I will NOT stop writing this fic before it's done. It's ok, I may not be writing every day, but you can count me on fantasizing about James and Sirius every day. YOU CAN COUNT ME ON THIS.  
> And I can not wait until I get my hands *dirty* on the next chapter xD
> 
> Lots of love.


	7. Wake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Problems being solved and James being spoiled.

7.

 

For a moment, James doesn’t know what’s happened. One second, everything seemed fine: he saw Sirius on the sidewalk hanging out with a bunch of Death Eaters, James was confused, James tried to make Bella mad, but he was already a bit mad at Lily. Next second—all of that is gone, he can’t see, he can’t hear, and he can’t feel anything but sheer, white-hot pain, like he’s being scorched alive by an iron rod. It’s so awfully wild that his throat feels like it got stuffed with a thick piece of cloth, and it’s suddenly a hell of a lot harder to breathe or even gasp for air. For a horrible moment, he thinks dying would sure be nice. Anything, _anything_ to end this agony would be nice.

Someone’s screaming at a distance; it may or may not be himself. Someone’s jeering. Loud footsteps, stinging curses. _Crucio!_ He hears the madwoman amp it up ever louder, the curse reaching its height of intensity before it strikes through him even _harder._ Yes, he’s definitely the one screaming.

After either five seconds or two hours—James can’t decide which—he’s finally let go. As soon as he realizes he’s got his eyes squeezed shut, he immediately snaps them open, yelping breathlessly as the sun hits them unforgivingly. He chokes out shards of gravel from his throat, tasting blood.

From his vantage point on the ground, James sees someone shuffling around right above him, red hair flying everywhere. She flings her wand-arm this way and that, stepping precariously over James’s leg and hopping to the other side of him. Shrieks out curse after solid curse, defending herself from the storm of counter-curses that spring at her from every which way.

“Lily,” James coughs hoarsely. No one hears him. He gets up. At least, he tries to get up.

“ _YOU BETRAYED HIM!”_ Lily, screaming at an unknown figure. “YOU PIECE OF HORSE SHIT, YOU ACTUALLY BETRAYED HIM!”

“Surprised, _Lils?”_ A cold, mocking voice.

Sirius— _Sirius’s_ _voice_. Sirius is here. He’s here.

“He told me you _left_ him—he—you have no idea how— _sad_ he was, all the time—every day—even today—“

“Stupefy!” Sirius cuts her off.

A bone-cracking noise hits James from his left, making James jump and nearly succeed in sitting up. He cranes his neck to see.

It’s Lily, sprawled on her back, empty eyes fixed on the blinding sun. Her scarlet hair fans out in all directions, the tips of which are just out of arm’s reach from James.

“Sirius?” James coughs out again. This time, it seems as if everyone hears.

Some of the wannabe Death Eaters imitate him—“ _Sirius?”—_ and snort. Bellatrix giggles.

“Oh, Jamie! Jamie Potter! _”_ Chanting gleefully, sashaying toward him. “I must admit, for a moment we just forgot all about you! Oh, I’m so _sorry,_ baby! _”_

James barely—but finally—manages to sit up. He winces slightly at the way his lower spine presses into the cracks in the cobblestones. He winces, again, when Bellatrix ever so accidentally steps on James’s palm with her heel. She looks less beautiful and more cruel from this angle. Her nostrils dangerously narrow, her chin rather sharp.

In one heaving breath, James rolls the other direction and makes a go at Lily. Scrambling at her shoulder with one hand, he nearly sticks his wand with the other into one of her wide-open eyes, about to bring her back.

“Fini—“

“Expelliarmus!”

James’s wand flies out of his grasp.

“Wha—“ He follows it with his eyes only to see it landing smoothly on Regulus Black’s palm. James’s elbows give out, and soon enough, he’s sitting down powerlessly with his butt on the ground beside Lily. He glares around.

Sirius is shifting his weight beside his brother, eyes cast slightly off the top of James’s head and staring into the space behind.

“Ahem! Well, well, _well,”_ Bellatrix starts, excited to begin the show. “Where do we start? Little Reggy—“

Regulus jumps.

“Oh!” Bellatrix hops on her heels. “Wait! I’ve got a better idea! _Sirius—_ maybe _you_ could entertain us with your talent today?”

Sirius’s eyes snap toward Bellatrix.

James tries to stand up when a sharp nail jabs at his shoulder. “Stay down!” rasps Bellatrix suddenly.

She turns, then, showing pearly-white teeth at the men huddled around.

“Well, what do you think, boys?”

The ‘boys’ jeer in unison. One of them even has the decency to thump Sirius on the back. Sirius stays rock-solid.

“What do you want me to do?” He says flatly. It sounds way too cold for James’s liking.

_Have they possibly done something to him?_

“Why, if I hadn’t _just_ demonstrated it to you!” says Bellatrix delightedly. “If you don’t remember, it will of course be my pleasure to replay it. Look closely, alright?”

A wand pokes into James’s chest. James can’t help it; he squeezes his eyes shut tight and twists his back a little in fear.

“Cruci—“

“ _Wait!_ ”

Nothing comes. No pain. James pries open his eyes.

Wand still steadily held over him, Bellatrix rounds on Sirius. Her voice lacks the usual mirth when she speaks.

“Wait?”

Sirius—somehow— _still_ makes a point not to look at James. He licks his lips: the first sign of genuine nervousness James has seen in this entire encounter so far.

“The Dark Lord will need him. Sane.”

James is about to do a somersault. ‘ _The Dark Lord?’_ Is this some kind of joke? He splutters and yet no one pays attention.

“And what makes you think a bit of a _Crucio_ would suddenly make him go insane? You were acquaintances with him in school, yes?” Bellatrix laughs a bit. “Is he a little—dare I say— _weak-hearted?_ ”

“I’m not weak!” James mutters in protest. He never was one to bite back his tongue.

“ _Quiet!”_ The wand jabs into his chest again and something like an electric shock spikes through his spine, a single taste of a Cruciatus. James shivers involuntarily. _Fuck, not again_ —

“Sirius? We’re still _waaaaitiiiiing!”_

“I can’t, Bella,” says Sirius suddenly, like he just remembered something. “I haven’t done it before. But I’m a quick learner, as you know already.”

“Ohhhhh, a quick learner, eh? I _love_ quick learners! You’re saying that you’ll learn after perhaps one more little—ah— _demonstration_ of mine?” Bellatrix is literally vibrating with excitement.

If only Sirius would _look_ at him, he could read his mind and figure out what the fuck he’s up to. _Sirius,_ he keeps on chanting in his mind. _Sirius fucking Black, why don’t you fucking—_

Bellatrix’s wand-tip once again presses into him. A bead of sweat rolls down his shoulder blade. _Oh, God, No—_

He barely hears the curse this time. His body shrinks in on itself before it even hits, and he screams, rips out his throat, and bleeds from a million different pin-pricks throughout his body, inside and out.

Fucking _—_ AAAAAAARGH—

 

_***_

 

He doesn’t know how long he’s been stuck in the abyss. It’s dark here, and uncomfortable, and suffocating, but at least it’s not painful anymore. He wonders vaguely if he’s died, if this is the afterlife. _In that case, I should work out a way to reach Sirius… I’ve still got to tell him I…_

 _“_ James?” Sirius’s voice is alert, if a little tired. James takes his time to let his focus adjust. When his eyes fully open, they open a bit further.

“S-Sirius?” He says. At least, he tries to say it. Nothing except a raspy string of air come out and it feels like his throat has been continuously rubbed at with sandpaper. He digs his elbows into the surface below him—soft—and shifts himself upwards, and outright fails to sit up.

Before he can crash back down, though, Sirius has caught him by the shoulder-blades. He’s guided gently back down, after which Sirius pulls his arm out immediately.

They stare at each other, wordlessly. Sirius blinks, but his expression remains strictly guarded, like he’d rather be looking anywhere else except directly at James, which he does happen to be looking at.

“Am I dead?”

“No."

James feels like he should say it.

“Sirius— I —“

“The Cruciatus,” Sirius cuts in, briskly. “Your body couldn’t take it; you passed out. Lily Evans is with her family, all good. I’ve informed Dumbledore.”

None of that matters to James at the moment. He cranes his neck to look at Sirius properly. The light from the ceiling—and James can finally tell by the ceiling that he’s lying on the couch in the living room of their house—is way too bright for him to make out Sirius’s full expression. He tries again.

“Sirius— I —“

“I’m spying for Dumbledore. Well, at least I used to.” Sirius says deftly, impersonally, much like how one would recite a business report to a hoard of media attendants. “Regulus is a fellow spy. Found out as soon as I started the mission. We’d be in Malfoy Manor most of the time, plotting stuff out, so today in Knockturn was an exception—if I’d known, I would have avoided it since I knew you’d be there—“

“Sirius—”

The world sways a bit. Pinpricks of black appear on the ceiling. They grow bigger by every second, blocking out the bright ceiling light, and finally blocking out Sirius’s figure.

“Stop talking,” Sirius says, a dash of panic across his face. 

“Sirius— I —“

But it’s too late. James has lost touch with his consciousness, a fraction of a second too soon.

 

***

 

The next time he wakes, the lights are out. The world outside is dark, too; he can tell from the gaps in the curtains. The fire flickers from the nearby fireplace, casting just the perfect degree of warmth over his entire body—which, in turn, he realizes, is wrapped up in layers of blanket.

James groans a bit, gives his neck a little twist.

Something pops up out of nowhere—Sirius’s face. It looks like he’d been hiding at the foot of the couch the whole time. The whites of his eyes glower in the firelight.

“Shit,” James laughs. It comes out breathy. “Si—you _scared_ me.”

Sirius doesn’t respond. His expression remains neutral, emotionless.

They breathe in silence while James slowly comes back down to earth. By the time he’s done, he’s a bit impatient.

“Si. Padfoot. Talk to me. I’ve missed you. Why're you awake? Why're you on the floor? What time—?”

“How are you feeling?”

“I—what?”

James gets an odd, shivery feeling. Sirius’s tone sounds off.

“Whazzamatter?”

“How are you feeling?” Sirius repeats impatiently.

“What’s _wrong?_ ”

Sirius scowls, then. At this moment, seeing any emotion on his face is better than seeing none.

“What’s _wrong_ is my freaky cousin has cursed an innocent with an Unforgivable,” he says.

“An innocent?” James echoes. It dawns on him. “You mean _me.”_

Sirius seems to have nothing more to say.

“I mean, what’s _wrong_ , Sirius? Hello???” He waves a hand in front of those dead-looking eyes, then flops it down immediately after noting just how  _heavy_ his arm is.

“I just told you.”

“No, I mean, not _that—“_

 _“_ Not that?” Sirius fires back, suddenly passionate. He's risen on his knees and is now properly glaring down at James, spitting sparks from his eyes. If James didn’t know better, he’dfeel quite intimidated. “ _Not that?”_ Sirius practically shouts. “What, then? The _other_ part? Funny, Prongs, you should know better than anyone.”

James is baffled. “What in the world are you—”

“Redheaded fellow Gryffindor? Head Girl? Muggle-born? Ring any bells?”

Sirius looks about two seconds away from doing James’s head in.

James just sort of stares up at him, struck dumb by the intensity etched on his countenance.

“You’re talking about Lily.”

“Five points to Gryffindor.”

“You knocked her out!”

“Out of necessity,” Sirius snarls. “Keep in mind that it was also myself that pulled you both out of the madness and made sure you were both safe.”

“Siri- _us_ …”

James hates it. He hates how… _technical_ Sirius sounds, like he saved James and Lily’s lives only because it was part of his duty, not because he actually…cared. James feels strangely vulnerable, extra emotional. Soundless tears spill copiously out of his eyes. He’s laid on his back, which means they slide out the corner of his eyes and wet the hairline around his temples. Sticky, uncomfortable, and embarrassing, and yet he wouldn’t be able to stop if his life depended on it.

“S-Sirius-”

Sirius glare follows what James presumes to be his tear-tracks. After a moment, he sighs.

“Oh, just go back to sleep. You’re still—“

“It was _nothing,_ Sirius! I was meaning to tell you, the whole time, it was _nothing!_ I t-tried to reach you through the m-mirror, and you wouldn’t respond, and one day I go to Remus’s and find out that s-somehow _he_ happens to have _your_ fucking mirror and—and I couldn’t b-believe you—”

“ _You fucking kissed her,_ James _._ ” Sirius sounds so… _done_ with James, not even heartbroken but just so goddamn _tired_  of him _,_ that it takes every single broken shard of willpower left in James for him to even keep talking.

“Yeah, on the _forehead!_ ”

“And that, in your dictionary, is platonic?”

“She asked me t-to s-stay the night at hers!”

“You—What?”

“She—she saw me being a bit—well, _down_ —and she was w-wondering, did I maybe want to stay the night at her f-flat? And I —“

“She said _what?_ ”

“She asked. If. I. Wanted to stay the night at her flat.”

“Why the bloody fuck—“

“Because she _noticed_ , Si! She noticed that I was— I was—well, not in my best c-condition, because this someone called _Sirius_ had l-left me all of a sudden a-and h-he— y-you— I didn’t know w-what t-to—“

Panic zips across Sirius’s face.

“Stop.”

Indeed, the shaking has become a bit too much. The shivers start from his neck and reach down all the way down to his toes, his mind all heated up and in overdrive. He shakes his head a bit, and groans at how wildly the brainy fluids or whatever that’s inside splashes around. He feels his tears switch tracks on his temples.

“Fuck.”

“Stop talking.”

He blacks out.

 

***

 

Shortly after, he wakes up again.

He starts to call Sirius’s name, but—

“Mmph.”

A warm, wet cloth swipes over his mouth and chin, muffling his speech.

“Mmph— _Sirius_.”

Sirius takes the towel away. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

James properly registers his face.

“Sirius, you look—hey, you should go to bed already—“

Sirius ignores him, just resumes with his face-wiping or whatever you’d call it, bringing the tip of the cloth up to the corner of James’s left eye and dabbing at it.

“What are you doing?”

“You sweat too much.”

“What? I do not _sweat.”_

“You do.”

James doesn’t feel like continuing the banter. There’s slightly more important things to discuss than James’s imaginary sweat.

“Listen, Si, _I don’t feel anything for Lily, alright?_ I would _never_ cheat on you, how could you even think that? And if I ever cheated on you, you should just leave me on the street suffering from the Cruciatus. _”_

The towel stalls on the tip of his nose.

“Got it.”

James fumes, and makes to grab at his own hair as per usual. “Look, I didn’t want her to feel _bad_ , Si. And she clearly _did_ , when I refused her offer—“

“I suppose you held her hand, too, so she wouldn’t feel bad?” Sirius says quietly.

“Oh— _that—?“_ James only vaguely remembers it from yesterday—or was it already the day before yesterday? Lily tugging on James’s hand, whisper-rushing into his ear, _James, come on, we gotta figure out what they’re up to—_ the cloak falling off at just the timing when Sirius happened to be looking straight at them.

Well, luck was never on James’s side, was it?

“Shit, Si, she was just trying to pull me because I wouldn’t budge. I was just so shocked to see you there, with _their_ lot! And Lily was so eager to know what was happening; she was trying to get us to get closer!”

Sirius leers, not at James, but at a particular patch of cushion right beside James’s ear.

“Naturally,” he breathes. “I bet she was practically _itching_ to prove to you that I wasn’t what you thought I was.”

“That you weren’t— What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“She wanted to prove to you that I was a phony, didn’t she? That I was only there to lure you into Voldemort’s trap—which, I dare say kind of _did_ happen, in reality—“ Sirius sniggers at himself.

James thinks. His mind sways a bit, his memory sways a bit more, but he keeps _thinking_ , forcing his mind to work its cogs despite the draining effort, until—

“Are you _jealous?”_

Sirius blinks.

“What?” Sirius scoffs. A beat or two of silence. “Just go the fuck to sleep, Prongs.”

“No need to… be jealous… of…”

“I’m not _jealous_ of anything _,_ James, alright? Go to sleep.”

“Why do you…” James has sure done a lot of thinking for the night. “…keep saying that? Why do you want me to go back t-to... go to s…sleep…”

“Looks like you're already going there.”

James _thinks_ he catches a slight amusement in there. For the moment, though, that’s more than enough to make him feel okay enough to fall asleep. Right before he does, though, he feels something warm and damp brush against his neck—the hot towel.

He wants to say this one thing, very desperately, before it’s too late yet again _._

 _“SiriusIloveyou_ -”

 

***

 

It’s impossible to tell the time when James finally wakes up next, but he sees daylight out. At least, he sees however-much daylight you actually get on a winter day in Britain. That’s the first thing he notices.

The second thing he notices, immediately after the first, is the huge mountain of black fur stuffed in between his arms, tickling his chin. It’s breathing, too, growing into a bigger lump with each rise and denting slightly in the middle with each fall, all of this in a deep rhythm that generates a warm something in James’s chest. He gently tightens the arm he’s got flung above Padfoot, and relishes in the warmth and sheer _completeness_ of it. He further curls himself around the animal, burying a big smile into one of those big, flappy dog-ears. Those ears, along with the fluffy stomach, the damp muzzle, the soft, bright eyes—currently closed—have always been both James and Prongs’s favorite.

He thinks about waking him up, because as much as he adores Padfoot, nothing and no one compares to Sirius himself in his complicated, human form. He changes his mind almost immediately, though. He likes everything this way—just the simplicity of lying on the couch with a big black dog.

A tune starts playing inside James’s head, and he starts humming it, real softly. It’s a little something from a while ago, perhaps in their seventh year. Something he used to catch all the time on the wizarding radio, during rushed breakfasts and chaotic dinners in the Hogwarts house elves’ kitchen, with his best mates, with Sirius.

The familiar melody is what eventually wakes Padfoot up. His ear twitches, flapping against James’s eye.

James laughs. “Paddy.”

The ear perks up higher.

Slowly, sleepily, Padfoot raises his head. As soon as their eyes meet, Padfoot transforms.

“How are you feeling?”

Sirius looks well-rested, color settled back in his countenance, although he still maintains that reserved expression.

“Good,” James grins. “Hungry,” he adds after a moment.

Sirius clicks his tongue, faux-exasperatedly, trying to feign lack of emotion. But James concludes he's not as angry anymore.

“And?” Sirius prompts.

“Eggs, Si. Your scrambled eggs. And french toast. And coffee, and biscuits, and—”

 

***

 

Half an hour later, James is sat up straight on the couch, licking his plate clean twice over. He’d make a good dog animagus, too, he figures.

“Si, do we have a day off?”

Sirius looks at him dumbly. “Uh. Yes? For the past four days, yes.”

“Wha— _four?”_

The Cruciatus still seems like yesterday. James says this, out loud.

“Well, you’ve been asleep the whole time.”

“But I woke up a few times, didn’t I? And you were there every time.”

“Yeah, well, someone had to keep the fire going, and you were sweating insanely at one point, and—“

“Hang on, you stayed up the _entire time?”_

“No, of course not. Just…well, _stayed_ …”

The crumpled up mattress by the foot of the couch. The patches of dog fur on the rug. The scattered pillows. Sirius’s exhausted, concerned face: the first sight he was greeted with every time he woke up from the ebbing, timeless black abyss.

He smiles sheepishly at Sirius. When Sirius goes to do the dishes, he can’t help it; his smile goes big and wide and his face goes hot.

 

***

 

He hasn’t peed in _four days,_ and he just had coffee, so naturally he gets a strong urge to go to the loo. Even though he hasn’t tried standing up yet, he figures it won’t be so hard that he couldn’t manage. So he tries, and he manages perfectly well for about a few steps before he comes crashing down. On the _floorboards,_ because the rug ended about a foot behind him.

He lands hard on his knees and elbows.

“Fucking _ouch.”_

Sirius comes bursting out of the kitchen.

“ _James?!”_

“The loo. I need to use the loo,” James blabers, absent-mindedly rubbing at his elbow.

Sirius takes the elbow and inspects it, then the other elbow, then both of James’s knees. 

“What were you thinking?! You can’t walk yet, let alone stand on your own!”

“How would you know? I had to try, didn’t I?”

“Of course I know. If you needed to visit the loo you should have just called me!”

James smiles, teasing. “Yeah? An authorized healer for Cruciatus victims, are you, now?”

Sirius’s face stays dead-serious. As a matter of fact, it turns quite stony. “An authorized healer for myself, you mean?”

“What?”

“Forget it. Can you stand?”

James half-stands, half-leans on Sirius’s shoulder.

“Sirius, what did you say? You haven’t possibly been hit by a _Cruciatus_ , have you?”

“Yeah?” returns Sirius softly.What makes you think that?”

“Hold on— _No—“_

“Not anymore. Just in my childhood.”

“What the actual _fuck—“_

“ _Don’t_ make a fuss; you’ll pass out again—”

“That shit _hurts—“_

“I know, trust me.”

“I’m _serious—“_

“No, I am. Did you want to go to the loo or not? I don’t have all day.”

 

***

 

They do, though. They have _all. Day._ Literally, twenty-four hours, and James can’t even begin to imagine all the things he could do with Sirius, all the things they could talk about and catch up on.

Right after he left James sitting on the toilet seat, Sirius goes up to grab James’s toothbrush and toothpaste. James finishes his business, Sirius returns, and they begin working on James’s teeth together. Or, more accurately put, James tries to brush his teeth as best as possible while Sirius rubs circles on his stomach and musses up his hair and—once—even nips at his earlobe. His coldness does seem to be thawing more and more by the second.

“Finished?”

James spits out the last of the water inside his mouth, humming his assent. His knees are going a bit weak by now, a little shaky.

This is how he ends up having to be literally carried back to the couch and dumped onto the cushions. When Sirius starts to make his way back to the kitchen, muttering something about unwashed plates, James makes a go for his wrist to keep him from leaving. Sirius turns around, raises an eyebrow. James tilts his chin slightly upwards, puckers his lips, and closes his eyes. He waits.

It doesn’t come.

For at least, like, seven seconds, it doesn’t come.

Then it _does_ , because this is Sirius, and Sirius always comes to James eventually.

Sirius kisses him. James suddenly remembers how it’s like to feel perfectly, unequivocally safe.

 

***

 

Even though James usually hates wasting his day-offs, he ends up falling asleep in the middle of a ridiculous reality TV show he was watching with Sirius.

The next time he’s conscious again, Sirius is gone.

“Sirius?”

His voice cracks. He clears his throat and tries again.

“Sirius?”

Nothing.

He braces his legs and takes off for the kitchen. Not there. He takes a deep breath and dashes up the stairs in one go.

“Sirius?”

Still nothing.

“ _Sirius!”_

 _Well, if he’s not in the house,_ James tries to reason with as much logic as he can muster, _he must be outside, right?_

He only has the mind to grab the keys before he’s set off down the ice-coated sidewalk. His feet slip and slide on the ground; his ears burn against the cold in no time at all.

“Sirius?” He keeps calling out, attracting curious gazes by passersby, to which he pays no heed. “Sirius?” 

He rounds a corner, calling, “Sirius?”

And then, there he _is_ , simply right there a few dozen steps away _,_ just like any regular suburban _dude_ and James does a double-take. Sirius does, too.

He comes jogging toward him as James still stands petrified, gaping.

“James? What the fuck?”

Sirius lays his palms on James's upper-arms and starts rubbing.

“Shit, you’re freezing, what happened?”

It _is_ a bit cold, actually. James looks down at himself, noting that he’s only donning a single layer of Sirius’s—originally _James’s—_ gray sweatshirt. His teeth chatter.

“N-nothing—“

“Nothing?”

“You were g-gone—“

“James, I was just getting food!”

“Wha—y-you were?”

“You’re not supposed to be walking yet!”

Sirius promptly shrugs off his deep-green cloak and goes to wrap it around James.

“You haven’t even bothered with a warming charm, have you?”

“I — uh —“ James suddenly feels stupid. He didn’t even bring his wand.

Sirius gives a firm tug on the hems of his cloak. It’s a bit heavy on James’s shoulder because of all the miniature groceries in the pockets.

Sirius reaches around to his arse and pats at it.

He pats harder.

“Uh— Si—?”

“Where’s your wand?”

“My—my wand. Oh. Erm.”

Sirius moves on to James’s front pockets, even while knowing full well that James never uses them to stow his wand. James peers at his face shyly, seeing the horror slowly settle onto it.

“You did _not.”_

“I — I panicked, alright?”

“Are you _mental?!”_ Sirius shouts in disbelief, earning yet a few more curious glances. He grabs at the sides of James’s head and stares intensely into his eyes.

“You don’t _ever_ go anywhere without your wand, James! You don’t _do_ that! Not when you panic! Not when I’ve gone missing, not when I’ve been captured, not when I’ve been killed! _”_

“ _No_ —Don’t say that—“

Sirius shakes his head abruptly, pulls out his own wand, and starts sprinkling warming charms all over James’s body. Then he sticks his wand into the pockets to lighten the weight of the groceries, making James feel instantly lighter. Then he hugs him, muttering in a warmth breath that tingles James’s neck: “hey” and “relax” and “let’s get home.”

 

***

 

James has gotten first say on dinner tonight. He’d been complaining about _having to lie still on the couch for hours_ despite being _perfectly well already_ and all the shit that Sirius did not want to hear—that he was miraculously compromised with being able to decide what was to be for dinner.

Sirius’s top specialty, lasagna, to be consumed in the comfort of sitting on the couch. Yum.

James finishes his meal first. He watches as Sirius scoops up the last of his lasagna, eating nonchalantly as if he hadn’t just cooked up the best lasagna flavor to ever exist, and reaching across to take James’s finished dish from his lap.

“Sirius I — I want— I want.”

Sirius looks up. “What’s wrong?” he says quickly, immediately setting down the dirty plates on the rug to shuffle closer.

“Nothing. Just—“

James swoops up in one breath and latches onto Sirius’s mouth with his own, suddenly, indescribably turned on by Sirius's soft, surprised gasp as he starts licking off the remaining hint of marinara sauce from those lips.

Sirius doesn’t waste any time, either. He wraps an arm around James and starts to gently push as to get James to lie down on his back.

After a short while, Sirius begins to taste less of lasagna and more of Sirius, and it’s that authentic _Sirius_ taste that ignites all the memories that had been buried sloppily in James’s mind for so many days and weeks. He moans, and violently thrusts his hips upwards, and Sirius moans.

“Easy,” Sirius mutters.

“N-no, I want—“

“What do you want?”

“Fuck me.”

Sirius giggles breathily. “Can’t, Prongs, you haven’t fully recovered yet.”

“I _am,_ Sirius, I am! I feel good! You don’t get to tell me whether I’ve recovered or not!”

Sirius sighs. “Oh, good, are we going there again? I have first-hand experience, remember?”

Well, if that doesn’t get James to shut up. His dick actually deflates a tiny bit, and he feels awful all of a sudden.

“Sorry.”

“Best not to take risks” Sirius says smoothly, like the conversation wasn’t just now about to go in a horrible direction. He lowers his head onto James’s neck and starts nibbling.

“I — oh —“ James moans, hips resuming to move vigorously. They hit a particularly good part on Sirius, making him moan gruffly.

“Let me take care of you,” he whispers. His breath dampens a particular patch on James’s neck.

“Oh—yes—please—“

James starts rubbing his hips back and forth, a moaning, gasping heap on the cushions, desperately clutching at Sirius’s back.

“Take it easy, alright?” Sirius says, despite knowing this is something James would never be able to simply ‘ _take it easy.’_ His fingers work out the knot in front of James’s sweatpants in no time.

James’s prick gets shoved inside Sirius’s mouth. He fights to keep his eyes open as those red lips pick up a steady rhythm to pump up and down his length, making all sorts of unnamed things explode inside James’s groin and everywhere else.

“Fuck _fuckfuck--”_

James's fingers wrap around Sirius’s hair and hold on tighter with each rise and fall of Sirius’s head. Sirius moans contentedly around his prick, sending a shockwave of heightened pleasure throughout his body. While still keeping at it, a pair of curious eyes travel up to meet James’s eyes. His expression is one of “Is this okay? Are you okay?” To which James does all he can to respond with _yesyesyes_  and _fuckdon’tstop_ on his own facial expression. 

In fact, he says them out loud.

“Bloody fuck oh yes don’t stop don’t stop— _ngh_ so good— fuck Sirius—“

James can’t help it; his hips become more and more erratic in their motions and his hands push down on Sirius’s head. “Oh _fuck,_ Sirius don’t stop—“

And Sirius stops. He actually stops, and he actually releases James’s straining dick from his mouth despite the hands pushing insistently down.

What the _bloody_ f-fuck.

James can’t even vocalize just how frustrated this gets him. His balls ache and his entire body stings with the effects of calamity. Meanwhile, Sirius calmly moves up James’s body until his head hovers directly over his own. Then he lowers his head a bit to kiss him softly. James gasps, startled, and—no one can blame him for this part—reaches down to grasp his cock himself and starts to stroke it, desperately. Sirius pulls out of the kiss and notes this. Aside from a twinkle of amusement, and a dash of arousal, James can’t quite recognize much in his gaze.

“Come for me.”

James moans; his hand speeds up.

Sirius finally replaces James's hand with his own and starts pumping heavily. James’s head twists sideways and his mouth opens wide in a silent moan, gasping, heaving, writhing around with all four limbs.  _Don't you dare fucking stop, not this time—_

“Easy, James. Easy. Take your time. Come for me,” Sirius keeps breathing into the area directly below his ear. “Come for me, James, that’s it…” He speeds up.

James comes loudly.

Sirius kisses him. “You did it,” he chuckles.

James makes a move to sit up, ready to finish Sirius off as well. But Sirius lays a stubborn hand on his chest.

“Don’t worry about it,” is all Sirius whispers before he rolls sideways onto the edge of the couch as he starts touching himself with a wild, hungry look fixed on James. James gulps, thirsty, and attempts to reach down for Sirius’s crotch again, only for his hand to be swatted away.

Sirius’s breath turns steadily heavier, more labored, and James can sense that his hand is picking up speed, expertly and efficiently driving himself toward the brink.

James can do nothing but observe the wondrous sight that is Sirius chasing his own orgasm, until he moves in to kiss him. His tongue explores the inside of Sirius’s mouth for what _would_ feel like the first time in forever, if not for the entire familiarity he instantly feels in it. Sirius’s tongue moves rather sloppily, his heaving gasps slipping from between both their lips and landing breathily on James’s chin. James pulls back.

“Have I told you that I love you, Sirius?”

That’s what does it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, can't believe I wrote this chapter so fast, it was such a joy xD
> 
> Don't forget to let me know your thoughts! What you loved, what you didn't love, and anything else.


	8. Affection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wholesome. Just wholesome.

8.

 

Surprisingly, James wakes up in their bed the next morning. He takes this to mean that he’s “well” now, that he’s not “ill” enough to have to be taken care of in the living room within a three-meter radius of Sirius.

Speaking of, where is Sirius? James climbs out of bed—pleased to find that his head doesn’t wobble too much like it used to—and travels downstairs, still in his pajamas.

He doesn’t find Sirius. But before the familiar panic can set in again, he spots this big, bright red _stuff_ that looks like airborne neon floating right at James’s eye level that basically screams, “ _look here._ ” They’re letters, spelled out all too clearly: I NG A R A G E.

James giggles to himself, practically skipping to the garage.

“I see you saw the message.”

Sirius merely glances this way. He looks to be preoccupied in some weird business concerning the hand-me-down motorbike he’d gotten impulsively at some Muggle’s garage sale a couple months back and never touched until now. He’s got grease all over his arms, highlighting the muscles shifting in them every time they move. What’s more distracting, though, is that Sirius has put on Muggle clothes for the occasion, whatever "the occasion" is supposed to be.

“What are you up to?”

James walks up to him, peering over his shoulder. He smells Sirius in the thin fabric of his light purple Muggle tee that says UNICORNS ARE REAL in silver glitter. Despite James’s insistence that it was “for _girls_ , Sirius, that’s for girls,” Sirius had had no qualms about purchasing the item of clothing—in fact he’d found it pretty darn amusing.

“Tryna get to this work.”

Sirius’s voice is muffled from slight exertion—he’s all bent over on his knees and peering at a random cluster of nuts and bolts around the middle fo the motorcycle like all of it makes sense to him.

“Uh…why?”

“Why not?”

James tries again. “I’m hungry.”

Sirius curses loudly as a nail flies off an appendage, and darts his arm out to snatch it before the whole thing can crumble apart. There’s an unpleasant squealing noise as his shoe slides a bit on dry concrete, and James sticks his own foot out to nudge at it.

“Fucking go get your own food.”

“Oh, so I’m all of a sudden allowed to walk around, then?” James says hopefully, but truth be told, he’s crestfallen. He was hit by a _Cruciatus_ for fuck’s sake—and for compensation, he doesn’t even get a full week of Sirius’s unconditional attention?

“Yes, Prongs,” Sirius says with a twinge of impatience and patronage. “And while you’re at it—grab me a coffee, will you?”

James doesn’t, of course. He sits in the dining room, crunching on store-bought biscuits and morosely listening to the Wizarding radio, trying and failing to focus more on the monotone, static overlay rather than on the content.

“Last night's attack on Godric's Hollow ended in a particularly staggering number of deaths—“

It cuts off with a buzz. James turns to frown at the radio, only to see a certainly proud-looking Sirius approach him. His arms are blackened right down to the fingertips, looking positively ridiculous in that dust-filmed girlish tee and a too-big-it-can’t-be-good smile. James can only raise his eyebrows as he waits for what promises to be an announcement nothing short of wonderful.

Sirius hums at his expression, and walks right up to him until James has to crane his own neck a bit to keep the eye-contact.

“I thought I asked you for coffee, Jamie?”

“You did, huh?”

Sirius grins wider, unaffected. “You and your talking back.”

Sirius’s palm cups his cheek and slides against it. It feels hot and oily, and James recoils—

“What the fuck?” He dabs a fingertip over his face and looks, only to find it coated in grease.

“Cute,” Sirius says, surveying all over his face, gaze suddenly intense. “Up for a ride?”

“What—?”

Two jackets fly across the room and flop onto Sirius’s shoulder. He takes one—thick, wool on the inside and denim on the outside—and swings the hems around James, before donning on his own black leather jacket.

“I am _not_ going on that thing.”

Sirius shakes his head. “I didn’t spend all that time meddling with the bike for _nothing_ , Prongs.”

And that’s that—Sirius rudely takes James's half finished coffee and gulps it down, before the empty cup zooms toward the sink together with the other dishes, and James's jacket sticks itself over his back and shoulders like the very elements of the Universe are orchestrating together for the sake of Sirius’s Possibly Fatal Muggle Experiment.

Sirius, already having gone all the way to the front door, looks over at him with glittering eyes.

“Come on, now, don’t be such a _girl_.”

 

***

 

“Fuck, Pads, it’s not _working!_ ” 

Sirius shouts back something in response, but James can’t make out a thing.

The seat beneath him gives a particularly violent shake and the bike gives out one last, ugly splutter, as the whole thing starts to finally move, and slowly, very slowly, the scenery begins to roll backwards.

Sirius whoops. James winces at the overwhelming loudness of the bike, Sirius, and everything, and proceeds to tighten his arms around Sirius’s middle.

“I _told_ you I’ve got it!” Sirius’s glee is borderline offensive. “I fucking _told_ you. See if we can bump it up a bit?”

“ _No,”_ James says, loud so Sirius can hear. Sirius hears, of course, but chooses to ignore it.

Sirius’s right knee jerks forward a bit, and before James knows it, they’re not slowing down but actually _speeding up,_ inertia yanking James back he’d literally topple backwards if he hadn’t already been clinging onto Sirius for dear life.

Two-storey suburban houses and lush, neatly trimmed lawns all zoom by in a blur, making James’s head whirl as if on a Portkey. The freezing air attacks his eyes like darts made of ice, and he presses his face into the back of Sirius neck for refuge.

At least Sirius has enough decency to ask, “you good, Prongs?”

James grunts in response, which apparently means affirmative in Sirius’s dictionary, because then he gives the gear a little twist and the motorbike takes off. Quite literally, it _takes off._

James yelps. “Sirius—Sirius—fucking—get—it—down— _now_.” The ground shifts farther and farther downward, houses and lawns and pavement all getting squished together like packed rubble. Sirius’s back starts to shake, and James snaps his head back up, alarmed, only to find him laughing boisterously.

“I _told_ you it worked, Prongs! I fucking told you!” Sirius says again, like he hasn’t made his point clearly enough already. James has to finally admit that yes, the bike isn’t half as malfunctioning as it had looked to be at the dumpster of electronic carcasses that bald muggle had the nerve to call “garage sale,” and it’s a bit euphoric to feel the winter wind whipping past his cheeks and ears, almost like he’s really back on his Nimbus Nineteen-Ninety. That’s if you ignored the absolutely biting cold, that is.

James snuggles up closer, and presses his numb ear against the crook of Sirius’s neck to transfer some of its heat. Sirius positively screams, but James’s ear insists, forcing Sirius to rummage around for his wand and burst out a balloon of steaming air in a frenzy.

“Fuck Merlin, Prongs, ever heard of a warming charm?”

The slight vibration of Sirius’s throat as he speaks sends a zing of pleasure through James’s now thawing ear. James hums, wrapping himself around Sirius in a bear hug and refusing to budge for the next twenty or so minutes.

Sirius never ascends too high, keeping the sullen, wintry clouds above them and making sure there are actually sights to see down below. They’ve long past existed the suburbs and are now soaring above hills upon rolling hills, some snow-capped and others only lightly fettered with cotton-balls, a slow, timid sea of dark green and white and a few maroon roofs of herders here and there. All of this nature seems to swallow James up; he feels so tiny and so vulnerable zooming by on this shaky, second-hand motorbike —“tiny” and “vulnerable” being two of the rarest adjectives he normally uses to describe himself. Then, he remembers that he’s got company, and promptly shifts his gaze away from the thousand feet below to the mere inches beside his face.

Sirius’s eyes are lazily scanning the scenery, occasionally flicking up to make sure they’re not running into a bird of something. Eyelashes winking every time he blinks in that slow, self-assured way, nose sniffing every once in a while against cool air. He notices he’s being stared at, far before James would have liked. He glances at James and blinks once, this time rapid, surprised at the unsolicited eye-contact. His lips melt into a lopsided smile, making James melt himself.

“What?”

“What?”

James leans in close to bite the corner of Sirius’s jaw, and Sirius laughs in a good-natured, carefree sort of way, knocking his head against his in return. They’re so close they’re practically attached together, two pieces to a puzzle that only ever had two pieces to begin with, and James wonders how he could have ever imagined being with anyone else, war or no war.

“I still think we could have just gone on our brooms.”

The low air density and the strangely intoxicating smell of Sirius’s leather jacket are getting to him hard. He imagines falling, falling, into the infinite expanse stretching out below. Though that’s impossible, because nothing, not even gravity, could detach his arms from around Sirius, his ear from the side of his pulsing neck.

“If you’d gone on your broom, you’d be dead by now,” says Sirius.

James grunts, no longer able to form words. It’s a mix of: a, he doesn’t understand why Sirius would say such a thing to Hogwarts’ ex-star chaser, and b, his mind’s a bit muddled. He shifts his head on Sirius’s shoulder and finds an especially soft patch of leather. To his slightest alarm, he realizes he’s _actually_ very close to falling, and there’s a minute urge to alert Sirius to it before it happens.

“We’ll go on our brooms”—Sirius says softly, lacking the patronizing tone James is so used to—“once you stop dozing off every half hour.”

 

***

 

It seems to be that James’s default spot has moved from the couch to the bed upstairs, because that’s where he finds himself the next time he wakes. He must have been unconscious for several hours now, because it’s dark outside, and he can smell the undeniable smell of cooking food wafting through the door. He’s also got a terrible hard-on, by the way, the kind that never goes away on its own.

The frying pan is sizzling fiercely beneath a plentiful layer of oil, and as a result, Sirius apparently can’t hear him coming in, because he’s completely jumped when James suddenly attaches to him from behind.

“Wha— _Prongs.”_ Sirius breathes out, struggling to steady himself after what looked to be a minor heart attack, and it’s so rare to see him in such a state that James giggles. “Fuck you.”

James hard on insists to be attended to, then, and presses against the cut of Sirius’s hip on its own accord. Sirius gasps, finally turning his head to properly acknowledge him, eyes already impossibly dark. James keeps at it, starting to rut a bit and making sure Sirius gets the full message by moaning straight into his ear. “Pads, oh _Paddy, Padfoooot.”_

“I’m _busy_ here, Prongs,” Sirius says, even as he’s already slightly breathless. “Stop this.”

“Stop?” James tries to pout and promptly fails as his arousal grows by the second. “Stop? Don’t tell me to…stop… _please_.”

The last word does the trick. James is violently flipped around so that his back is turned toward Sirius, and he hears the unmistakable _click_ of the stove switching off. He grins to himself, satisfied, anticipating, and immeasurably turned on.

“ _Ngh.”_

Sirius’s half-hard prick shoves up against the crack of James’s arse, and James hears him suck in a breath like he’s consciously trying not to drool.

“Prongs.”

He sounds so crazily aroused that James is encouraged to crane his head around to look. Sirius stares back, unblinking, with huge, dark pupils, looking like he’s about to swallow James whole. His cock slides dangerously over James’s arse, once, twice, and James decides he can’t drag this on anymore, not a second longer.

“Please, Si,” he mutters again, praying the magic word will work a second time.

“Please what?”

Sirius’s palm travels up to cup his jaw, the other down to brush his cock. It sends a shiver through James, one that’s good and not-fucking-enough at the same time that he chooses to express articulately with, “fuck.”

“Did you want something in particular, hmm, Prongs?” murmurs Sirius from behind, cooing with a touch of ragged.

“J-just…” he cuts off and writhes slightly when Sirius squeezes his cock over his ever-tightening jeans. “ _Fuck,_ Si, just. Just do it, won’t you?”

“Do what?”

Sirius’s cock has reached maximum now—James can fucking _feel_ it when he squeezes his arse cheeks together. It _would_ make James even harder, only he’s so close to exploding point already, his breaths coming out increasingly messily despite not having moved an inch. He flings his arms up and behind him to grab at Sirius’s hair, fingernails digging into his scalp in a way that conveys, _hurry up,_ pushing his arse against his cock, and making Sirius grunt.

“You want me to stick it in you, don’t you?” His voice drags over his neck, his hand rubbing harder at James’ clothed cock.

“Yes—yes—yes—fucking— _do_ —it.”

“Then strip for me.”

“What?”

This is new. Sirius has never _asked_ him to strip before, he’d just tear off his clothes at random and on his own, never bothering to _ask._ James peeks back again, confused and painfully horny.

“Did you ask me to—“

“Strip. I said strip, now you strip. Don’t fucking ask questions.”

Sirius is unsmiling, face flawless and undisturbed and straight out of a fucking Renaissance portrait that it unnerves James. He tries one of his trademark grins, and it doesn’t work. In fact, Sirius actually has the audacity to roll his eyes, letting his nails drag on the fabric of James’s t-shirt in a way that’s almost lazy, like he’s considering getting back to his _cooking,_ for fuck’s sake.

“Did you want me to fuck you or not?”

James’ knees jerk as the question hits a nerve, and he just about loses his mind. He frees himself from Sirius’s touch like he’s been electrocuted, and tears the items of clothing in question off of himself. He realizes he’s being _played_ by Sirius, really, the fucking nerve of him, and today’s the day he’s going to show that, contrary to Sirius’s assumption, he’d _not_ a basic, good-for-nothing whore.

Even with all that nonchalance business, he still catches Sirius’s adam apple bob when James does his fly swiftly and sinks to his knees, now completely naked. Pushing his own straining erection out of his mind for the time being, he fixes a blank stare to match Sirius’s, and proceeds to do one light, teasing lick on the head of his cock through his boxers. He feels the tell-tale twitch underneath his tongue, and tastes a hint of salt on the thin, bulging fabric, enough to convince him to continue. James knows from experience that at any point now, Sirius would be grabbing his hair and taking out his own prick, unable to resist from thrusting into his mouth himself. So he chooses this moment to stop, and reaches down to stroke his own hard-on, angling himself slightly upwards so that it’s practically impossible for Sirius _not_ to look.

Sirius mutters out a garbled curse and, rather than force-feed James his cock as he’d been expecting, yanks him up and flips him face-down onto the kitchen table. Then, there’s his cock again, reclaiming James’s arse like it owns it—only this time, Sirius’s boxer isn’t there as an extra layer. Overwhelmed and feverish and fucking ecstatic that his play-it-cool tactic worked brilliantly, James bows his head to look behind in an attempt to catch Sirius’s eyes.

Sirius’s palms crawl over James’ back, smoothing out the tension James didn’t know was there, and reaches over for the bottle of cooking oil.

“Shit,” James laughs at the unusual choice of lubricant, but at that moment Sirius halts and raises an eyebrow at him, and he gulps. “I mean, _please,”_ James says hastily with as much sincerity as possible.

Sirius aligns his cock toward the perfect spot, leaning his torso forward so it’s laid flat over James’s back, assertive and hot and smelling faintly of oil it drives him nuts. Then, Sirius pushes in, in, further in, and James arches his head back, biting back a scream…

 

***

 

They’ve still yet to hear from Dumbledore. As much as James feels guilty about it, he can’t bring himself to mind much; strolliing down the alleys of muggle London and trying out bourgeois restaurants whenever Sirius feels like taking a break from being ace chef is nothing short of delightful. Plus, they even once spotted a couple of Death Eaters scurrying around Piccadilly like a bunch of mice, proudly calling themselves “Snatchers” when interrogated, and mistakenly assuming James and Sirius for a pair of “useless idiots from Dumbledore’s private boy scout.” They’re regretting that now, of course, and James frequently sniggers at the image of them being reminded who the _real_ “useless idiots” are, every time their cells are visited by a Dementor or three.

It’s only at night that they talk about it—as in, _really_ talk about it, not just crack jokes starring Ridiculous Rodolphus or speculate on which positions Bellatrix would look best in sex. Nighttime is when they talk about _real_ stuff like war and who-got-murdered-where. It’s when James curls up against Sirius and waits for about five seconds before Sirius returns the gesture, holding each other close as they fill each other in on what they’ve found out so far. For instance, James learns that Regulus Black, the cause of many a Sirius’s trouble and consequently, James’, has recently discovered a “big secret” of Lord Voldemort’s which he has continuously been refusing to tell Sirius—or anyone, really—about it. James has to swallow back the urge to say, “but isn’t he your _brother?”_ knowing from first-hand experience how much the subject could be a touchy one when you’re dealing with Sirius. For the moment, James decides to simply swoon over the soft, minimally endearing, but still somewhat strict look on Sirius’s face whenever he talks about his brother.

James also learns the reason why Sirius hadn’t been able to tell him about being a spy—they’d cast a spell on him so they’d be alerted if he acted even slightly unfaithfully, like tell someone he’s a spy. This doesn’t count anymore, because the bastards have already figured out by now that Sirius isn’t as faithful as they thought him to be.

On yet another night, James learns that Sirius hasn’t seen any of his relatives—the _decent_ ones, specifically ‘Andy’ and ‘Uncle Alphard’—for years now, not even knowing if they’re dead or alive. Sirius says all of this in such a cut-off, breezy way, and James can’t help but wonder if this is how he talks about _James,_ too, when he’s not around.

_That’s ridiculous._

James looks at Sirius as hard as he can under the faltering lamplight, surveying him for any underlying emotion.

_He loves me, doesn’t he?_

“You’re thinking, James.”

“Oh, uh, no.”

Sirius huffs, and rolls over on the sheets so he’s turned his back against him.

_Of course he loves me. He just hasn’t got the nerve to say it out loud._

James stares at the back of Sirius’s head for a while, then brings a finger up to trace soft patters in his hair contemplatively. He hears Sirius sigh a bit, and feels him snuggling back into James—the closest it gets to a downright cuddle.

_But if he really loved me, he’d tell me, wouldn’t he?_

James pushes into him, too, and while it’s quite rare for him to be the bigger spoon, he doesn’t find it awkward at all. He brings his hand over to touch Sirius’s chest, where he finds his heart beating, solidly, steadily, like it knows it’s in the right hands. He whispers a spell, and the lights go out.

_Well, if he can’t tell me yet, he will soon._

 

***

 

James has been sort of looking forward to a romantic, table-for-two kind of Christmas eve, the first one they ever spend with just themselves, but Sirius insisted they accept the invitation from Mrs. Potter. James has not stopped groaning and grumbling ever since they’d sent Whistles carrying an affirmative response; the Potters tend to take celebrations a tad overboard.

What’s worse, Sirius actually had the nerve to dare James into taking the front seat of his muggle motorbike. James never was one to refuse dares, and he wasn’t going to start anytime soon, but driving a grumbling, boring motorbike doesn’t excite him in the slightest. After too much fumbling around with gears and brakes and whatnot, James gets it to move, only to find out that the last gear—the one that makes it fly—doesn’t _work_.

“Hey, Pads, your ingenuous little add-on here seems to be jammed, I'm afraid.”

Sirius rests his chin on his shoulder, taking a peek.

“Oh, that? We won’t be using that today. I said we were _riding_ to your parents’ not _flying,_ didn’t I?”

“We’re actually going the _muggle_ way?” James says, incredulous.

A couple of passersby turn to stare from the sidewalks, confused at James’ strange vocabulary, and jumping when James accelerates a bit too suddenly. “Why not? It’ll be fun.” Then Sirius starts babbling about his fond, pre-Hogwarts muggle encounters: the first time he got drunk, the first time his muggle “gang” friends let him try a cigarette, the first time his thirteen-year-old muggle “boyfriend” took him on a motorbike “just like this one” to a dark, deserted park and gave him his first blow-job.

“But Christ, it was _good._ So good my mind fucking exploded.”

“I really don’t want to hear about this.”

Sirius rubs James’ belly playfully, chin still resolutely perched atop his shoulder, and when James chances a sideways glance, he catches him grinning like a moron.

“Eyes on the road, Jamie, eyes on the road— _whoa!”_

James might have accelerated a bit too much, and must have consequently broken some stupid, unheard-of muggle rule, because the next moment, there’s sirens bleating from behind them, growing louder and louder the more James speeds up.

“Fuck, Si, _do something!”_ James yells above the noise. Sirius starts to actually fucking _laugh,_ in the uncontrolled, disrespectful, borderline- _evil_ kind of way, that James is really fucking alarmed.

“Fuck—fuck—fuck—“ he swerves left and right, even forgetting what colored light he was supposed to stop at, and therefore probably breaking a few more rules along the way. Drivers shout, cars honk, pedestrians gasp and scramble for their bloody portable electronics, and James blushes furiously as he releases one handle to get out his wand. Expectedly, the motorbike sways violently to the side, and Sirius yelps loudly into his ear, somehow still managing to sound positively gleeful.

“Hey! No magic! Cheater!”

At least Sirius thinks dying would be a bit too much, because at that moment, he reaches an arm across to get ahold of the abandoned handle.

A few indiscriminate “obliviate”s andseveral more befuddling greens, yellows, and reds later, Sirius’s barking laughter finally subsides into small, ridiculously girlish giggles. The motorbike has stopped swaying so life-threateningly, but James’s entire body is still shaking; ragged, white breaths released into the dusk, blurring the vision before him.

“Green is for ‘go,’ Jamie, simple a’ that…”

They splutter to a halt in front of the Potters’—the facade almost unrecognizable due to an overabundance of lights and ornaments— and they have just enough time to sneak into the backyard for a quickie. Sirius blows him a good one, of course, but James refuses to return the favor when he deems Sirius’s eyes to be not apologetic enough.

“ _Eyes,_ my arse! Whatever do you know about my fucking _eyes?_ I said sorry, didn't I?” 

They’re both pretty pissed at each other when they go through the front door, Sirius complaining about blue balls and choosing not to hold it open for James but swaggering his way headfirst through the hallway like he owns the place, despite it being the property of _James’s_ parents and all.

James is properly fuming by the time he reaches the living room, and that’s how he makes eye-contact with his father for the first time in half a year. Mr. Potter’s excited grin morphs into a frown in seconds, as he comes bounding over to him.

“J! What’s got your wand in a knot, kiddo?” His voice is booming as always, and James cringes when he sees Sirius glance at them curiously in the midst of receiving a kiss on the cheek by Mrs. Potter. Mrs. Potter finishes spraying Sirius with cheesy attention, and looks around, too.

“What’s the matter, sweetie?”

James cringes again, this time at the use of the greatly overdue nickname, and refuses to look at Sirius, whom he assumes to be grinning moronically judging from his excellent peripheral vision. He plasters on a grin, patting his father on the shoulder.

“Nothing. Thanks for inviting us over. So, how’ve you been doing?”

 

***

 

This year, Mrs. Potter even went as far as to invite real-life dwarfs—not even charmed dolls, but _real_ dwarfs—dressed up as Father Christmas and singing carols by the fireplace.

It takes ages to finish greeting every single extended family member, and rather reluctantly introducing everyone to Sirius, that he’s already exhausted by the time they get to dinner. Sirius, who’s back to his cheerful, extroverted, bastard self, manages to chat up everyone within three seats from him, and pays James only the slightest attention. James, in the meantime, only devours his food and rolls his eyes every now and then at the ridiculously loud laughter that follows Sirius’s occasional bad jokes.

Mrs. Potter’s chocolate lava cake is actually goddarn amazing, to be honest, and James is in a half-decent mood by the time they’re opening the third bottle of red wine. When he’s halfway through his second slice of cake, the doorbell rings, and he looks up hurriedly at his parents. Mrs. Potter only twinkles her eyes at him, as Mr. Potter goes to get the door, humming happily. The alcohol abruptly stops singing inside James’s body, and James waits, anticipating.

James hears someone at the door—first, a low, rough, female voice, and second, a powerful male voice—“Oh, Fleamont, we’re so sorry we’re late—.” He chances a glance at the hallway, where he hears footsteps, and—yes, they’re here. They’re actually here.

He doesn’t even spare a moment to contemplate on the woman’s strikingly familiar looks, in his rush to look back at Sirius, intent on catching his reaction when it happens. Sirius is still talking, still oblivious, inciting another round of bloody giggles all around his vicinity. Then one of them notices the incomers, and stops laughing. He stares in shock—James guesses at the _woman_ , in particular— and the old bloke next to him looks up, too, followed by the lady next to him, as if a storm cloud is spreading across the dining table. It’s not long before it reaches Sirius. James swallows.

After what feels like long seconds, Sirius finally notices. He looks quizzically at the shocked faces before him that are staring at something behind him, and turns around to see. James watches carefully as the eyes open wide, and the lips part, speechless and utterly dumbfounded.

“Sirius! Oh, _there_ you are!”

The woman says, delighted, rushing toward where Sirius sits unmoving.

“Oh my god,” Sirius whispers, and promptly scrambles up from his seat, actually being clumsy and everything as he pulls the woman into a crushing hug. Seen from the wrong angle, it looks frighteningly like Sirius hugging fucking Bellatrix. “Fuck, I _can’t_ believe it. Is it you? Is it really you?” He’s shaking—James can’t tell whether he’s sobbing or laughing.

“It’s me, _it’s me,_ Sirius, dear, I can’t believe this, either… So glad… Hey, look here, someone else is here to greet you,” Andromeda finally releases Sirius, eyes looking slightly wet.

A man steps forward, beaming.

“Sirius.”

“Alphard.”

As the two men embrace like long-lost best buddies, Mrs. Potter heartily begins the much-needed introductions.

It’s not long before Sirius notices James staring intently, and adds two and two together. He beams; the rare, sincere kind of grin that never fails to make James churn inside and, seemingly not giving a care about who’s looking and who isn’t, swoops down to kiss him on the mouth. James is startled and so happy that he’s still got a grin stuck on his face, when James’s parents wink at him, no doubt looking absolutely foolish. He blushes, but soon enough, everyone’s got their attention focused on the intriguing stories of Andromeda and Alphard. Turns out they’re part of the fucking Order. Dumbledore never tells them anything.

Mr. Potter brings in a fourth bottle to celebrate the newcomers, and when he pops the cork off, it proceeds to zigzag across the room like an over-excited snitch. A startled Whistles takes off from her favorite spot on Sirius’s shoulder, twittering around in the air in mad circles. Everyone laughs, and starts making drunk, ridiculous attempts to catch the snitch before Whistles gets to it, and at one point, Alphard actually jumps onto his chair to finally make a successful grab, guffawing all over himself. The entire, huge family explodes in overblown cheers and excessive applause, some of them getting up to dance clumsily when the dozen dwarves by the fire strike up a jolly old song.

For the rest of the dinner, James listens to Sirius’s relatives’s war encounters with profound fascination, laughs accordingly when Andromeda morphs her face into the faces of ducks and pigs and other creatures he can’t quite name, and cheers politely whenever someone-or-other does an extraordinary move on the living-room-rug-turned-dance-floor, distinctly noting that for the whole time, Sirius’s hand never strays from his thigh.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The avid reader would notice that my writing "style" or "voice" or whatever you'd call it has been gradually changing since I first started out this fic... And I've been making little changes to the earlier chapters to keep the whole thing consistent. Sorry if my changing voice is disturbing you... I promise to get better, I promise.
> 
> On another note, the fic doesn't end here! (Although I really wish it did, for the sake of these two.) I try to update every Sunday/every other Sunday. Cheers for now xxxx and don't forget to comment <3


	9. Fear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit of a short chapter here, but I hope the drama makes up for it.

9.

 

Usually, Sirius is an early riser. He’d be gone by the time James wakes up, comforter balled up and tossed indiscriminately over James so he’d wake up soon from discomfort. He’s not so rude this morning, though. He’s still there when James wakes, which is close to nine AM, staring at him with wide-open eyes and shuffling his body around in failed effort not to disturb.

James squints his eyes open, and Sirius doesn’t miss a beat to rush in and plant a chaste kiss.

“Jamie, Merry Christmas.”

“Merlin, Sirius,’ James clears his throat, noting it’s quite dry—a sign of a good sleep. “Did you just wake up?”

“No, obviously. Why would you think that my disciplined self would stay asleep until such a sinful hour in the morning?”

James furrows his brows. “So you were awake in bed for…how many hours, just _waiting_?”

Sirius scowls a bit, at that. “Jesus Christ, why do you have to make it sound so complicated? I’m trying to be _romantic_ here, don’t you realize—it’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

James snuggles his face into the front of Sirius’s pajama to hide his huge smile.

“Yeah, it’s what I wanted,” he whispers hotly into the fabric.

Sirius shifts, pretending to be uncomfortable. But at that point, James’ morning wood pokes at Sirius’s side with interest, and Sirius no doubt notices, because he’s already reaching back to fumble with the bedside drawer where their lube is stowed.

“ _James_ ,” he hears him say annoyedly, and James looks up, confused and slightly dazed. “Not _now,_ for fuck’s sake. I just said I was trying to be romantic.”

Apparently, James initiating morning sex doesn’t count as a romantic act. Sirius brings his hand up, which seems to be fisted loosely around something. A gold and metallic material peeks from inside it.

“Ready?”

James sits up on the sheets, bringing himself to eye-level with Sirius’s fist, holding his breath with anticipation. Sirius opens slowly, finger by slender finger, and there lies a simple, gold chain, catching the sun from the window and glinting in an odd, expensive-looking way.

“Wow.”

James tears his eyes from the gold to meet Sirius’s gaze. Sirius is looking at him strangely, almost thoughtfully, and James is just about to ask what the matter is when he’s suddenly back to the smirking, sarcastic prick that he is.

James cranes his head, silently exposing the bare skin on his neck to Sirius, and waits. Cool metal meets flesh, and suddenly a spark of something comfortable and fuzzy and weirdly soothing runs across his body—not unlike the feeling when he first touched his wand with his fingertips.

“Feel something?” Sirius prompts curiously.

“Yeah… Yeah, like the first time—“

“—you held your wand?”

“Yeah.” James blinks, surprised.

Sirius nods once. “Whenever you’re in real trouble, it’s supposed to alert me. I don’t know _how,_ exactly, but they told me it works at any distance and it’ll immediately take me there. It even works across time—“

“Who’s ‘they?’ Who sold it to you?” James leans in, intrigued.

“The blokes at Knockturn. Borgin and Burkes, remember that one?”

“Borgin and Burkes?!”

“Yeah, why?”

“But their stuff is _mad_ expensive,” James says hoarsely.

Sirius slow-grins, seemingly enjoying James’ reaction. “What, why? Did you want a refund?”

“Fuck, _no,_ why would I want a fucking _refund?_ You’re impossible, you are.” James moves in to kiss him, one hard carded into his hair and another caressing the newly attached chain around his own neck. “Thank you, Pads. I love this. I love you,” He murmurs against his lips, and Sirius hums back contentedly.

James feels himself getting carried away, already straddling Sirius’s thighs and forcing him against the headboards without having made the conscious decision to do so, and it doesn’t help that Sirius isn’t making any attempts to stop him, either. But he knows he _has_ to slow down for the next bit. He’s been anticipating it all week, and he can’t rush it, otherwise he won’t be able to (hopefully) savor every moment of it.

Sirius wraps an arm around his lower back to hitch him closer. Their groins brush against each other’s, making James whimper despite himself. Settling his hands firmly on Sirius’s shoulders, James eases himself back again, and wills himself not to succumb when the gap between them starts to close for the second time.

“Wait,” he gasps. He almost-smiles at the frustrated look on Sirius, only he’s dangerously aroused himself. “Don't you want to know what my gift is, Pads?” he says, a little breathlessly.

“Your gift? Bloody fuck, that can wait, I’m sure.”

“No. It’s got to be now.” James steadies himself on Sirius’s lap, then proceeds to peel his own shirt off, slowly, tantalizingly. When he’s done, he reaches out for his wand on the other side of the bed and, enjoying Sirius’s flushed, quizzical expression, mutters, “ _revelio._ ”

Sirius gasps sharply.

“No fucking way—you didn’t—!”

“I did,” James giggles, scratching the hairline around the back of Sirius's ears. “Can’t you see?”

“Fuck.”

Sirius doesn’t say anything else for the next two minutes or so. He stares at the dots of ink scattered across James’ chest, gathered slightly denser towards the left.

The entire Canis Major spreads out to a size of a good handspan, some big they can pass off as moles—albeit _stylish_ moles—others so faint they may just as well be tricks of the eye if not looked at properly. Sirius _is_ looking at it properly at the moment, though— _all_ of it, the big ones, the small ones, and the even smaller one _—_ but eventually, naturally, his gaze settles on the largest one of all: the only one that’s not a dot but an _actual_ star, where eight even-angled lines converge together at a single point. It darkens for a moment before fading back, and keeps repeating, all at its own careless pace.

“This one—it’s—I dunno _—_ it’s _twinkling.”_ Sirius describes in inspiring articulation.

“It’s a _star,”_ James laughs. “What do you expect?” He squirms pleasantly underneath Sirius’s fascinated gaze, sinking his fingers further into his impossibly smooth hair.

Sirius reaches out a finger and gently brushes at his namesake. James tries not to gasp or to writhe more than is strictly necessary, letting Sirius observe the art of work without distractions—for now.

“Oh my god,” Sirius mumbles, as he presumably catches the Dog Star twinkle brighter at the contact. James looks down at his chest to make sure, just in time to see it fade back to normal.

“Mind if I—?“

James looks at Sirius, whose face is about a head or so below him, given James’ current position on his lap. The angle allows him to see the full extent of Sirius's eyelashes fluttering as his gaze is fixed onto Jame's chest, pink tongue poking out curiously from underneath the nose to wet the lips.

James gets the gist of it and chuckles.

“Go ahead.” He gives a little tug on his hair.

The top of Sirius head bumps into his chin as he makes a go for it, and James is forced to tilt his own head up to give him full access. Something warm and wet and ticklish makes contact with his skin, and he gasps softly, staring at the ceiling one moment and closing his eyes the next.

Sirius sucks on the star a bit, then releases it with a wet pop—immediately followed by a breathy laugh that quivers James’ dampened, sensitive skin.

“Shit—it’s doing it again.”

Sirius shifts to make room, and James looks down to see. Indeed, the star is doing that _thing_ again—the twinkling thing—or is it the _beating_ thing? It does look to be thumping at a pace close to James’ heart rate. It’s fucking beautiful, really, seeing it glisten in Sirius’s spit and going steadily redder. It stands out from the crowd, beating softly while others stay immobile, thin lines reaching out in all angles while others are mere, faceless freckles.

“That’s you, Pads—I mean, _Sirius._ That’s you, Sirius,” James whispers, unable to get enough of his lover’s name. “Sirius,” he chants again, as Sirius irresistibly goes back to work. James had made the right decision to place the special star on _that_ specific position, he concludes. Right below his left nipple, and possibly right above his own heart. He could get used to Sirius sucking on it as a new hobby.

Sirius’s tongue and teeth keep at it for a while, evidently enjoying the reaction it gets out of James and the star, but his hands now travel around to squeeze his bum that suggest nothing but renewed intention.

“So this is what I get for Christmas, huh?” Sirius huffs against his star, all warm breath and wonder in his tone _—_ and if there’s a touch of sarcasm in there, it’s very light. “A tattoo on _your_ skin.”

“I know you like it,” James teases. His hips have started to rut into Sirius again.

“I know _you_ like it,” Sirius says, a smirk audible in his voice.

James knows he got the right gift, though, because after they finish, Sirius seems eager to return double the cuddles he receives from James, kissing him all over the face and once, even saying “thanks.”

 

***

 

Remus raises one of his iconic eyebrows when he registers the both of them at his door.

“Moons, buddy! Merry Christmas!”

“Ah, I see. You’re back to star-crossed, nothing-whatsoever-happened-between-us lovers again. Care to divulge the details?”

James opens his mouth, but Remus decides to cut in.

“Actually, don’t. I couldn’t care less.”

“Rude.”

James watches Remus serve tea and is hit with an idea.

“Hey—let’s have Wormy over, too—wouldn’t _that_ be fun?”

He’s met with silence. Sirius looks up from the _Prophet_ to scowl at him, and Remus continues to serve tea without meeting anyone’s eyes.

“Oh, come on, what’s _wrong_ with you two? I haven’t seen him in ages, and it’s Christmas, and—“

“I’m not sure about that, Prongs,” Remus says quietly.

James stares at him as he finishes pouring the last of the hot water into his cup. He waits, and yet Remus looks to be pretty much done with the conversation.

“Care to elaborate?”

Remus sighs as he takes a seat. “Look, James, I don’t know anything, alright? But ever since he didn’t show up at the last moon—“ He sees James about to interrupt and continues hurriedly. “I know what you said, James. You said he was probably busy that night. Well, I wasn’t so sure. So the next chance I got, I checked with Dumbledore, and he told me he’d deliberately kept Wormtail’s shift open that night because he knew that the four of us stuck together every full moon. So unless Wormy was up to something else that wasn’t related to the Order—“

“Shit, Moony, aren’t you getting a bit obsessive,” James laughs.

“Shut up.”

James turns his head, surprised. Sirius has got the Prophet all neatly folded now, placed temporarily atop the coffee table, a stare fixed on Remus. “Go on,” he says flatly.

Remus continues, carefully avoiding any eye-contact.

“So I floo-ed him up. Wormtail, I mean. He showed up, but he sounded a bit squeaky—a bit on the pale side, too, you know, like he’s been ill or something. I asked him what the matter was. He didn’t answer too enthusiastically—just that he was taking some time off with his muggle relatives. I reckon he’s just scared; isn't eager about hang out with the likes of us for the time being. He does his Order duties alright, Dumbledore’s assured me, but for the rest of the time he hides himself between the muggles. Not that that’s _safe,_ I don’t think…”

James shrugs, and slurps at his tea. “There you go, then. Makes sense, eh, Wormtail hiding ‘round ‘em Muggles,” he chuckles.

Nobody responds to that, and soon, James decides to just let the whole thing slide. It’s not worth it—Sirius making those ugly faces at him and Remus getting his guard up and all, like the time he kept refusing to tell where he disappeared to every month. He takes the wheel of the conversation, jumping up to lecture on the odds of the Cannons winning the Championship, telling Remus the stories he heard last night from Sirius’s aunt and uncle, and recounting the time Sirius and he had captured two Death Eaters single-handedly (or double-handedly, to be more precise) in central London. Remus absorbs it all and reacts little, apart from the occasional “hmm”s and “I see”s. James wants to push and never stop pushing until Remus finally lets out what exactly is bothering him, only he knows from seven-plus years of being with him that such a tactic could only lead somewhere worse.

Sirius, on the other hand, immerses himself in the _Prophet_ for at least a good hour—only looking up once in a while to acknowledge James in a blank-ish stare before going back to his reading. Sure, Sirius never is  _polite_ (except to a few select people, like James’s mother) but it's getting slightly aggravating. What's he expecting to get out of the _Prophet_ , anyway? Is it depression, or anxiety? Either way, no normal person takes an _hour_ reading the goddamn paper.

James suggests opening up a bottle of champagne he knows Remus to be hiding in his cupboard, but his suggestion is met with a flat “I’m not in the mood” by Remus. By that time, Sirius is standing up from the couch and stretching his limbs, ready to leave.

“Got the mirror, Remus?”

It’s the first time he’s has spoken in bloody ages.

 

***

 

Sirius apparates them the second they step down Remus’s doorstep.

James is vaguely surprised to see that they don’t land at their _own_ doorstep—instead, he finds himself in an unfamiliar street corner of what looks to be downtown London. The street bustles with the usual hubbub, dusk so dark it’s nearly night.

“And we’re in London because—?”

James looks at Sirius, who’s looking up and down the street anxiously with hunched shoulders, the collar of his leather jacket hitched high.

“Listen,” he says, briefly nudging at James’s back as he starts to walk in a random direction. “About what Moony said. About Wormtail. Look, don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but I feel funny about all of it.”

“Wormtail? What about Wormtail?” James says, nonplussed.

They walk rather hurriedly down the street in their robes, as if they have some business to attend to—exactly like one of the surrounding muggle businessmen swishing by in fancy suits. Nobody cares to look at their weird attire for more than a second. In the meantime, James struggles to keep up with the pace.

“Remus reckons Wormtail’s just been hiding with the muggles, but I’m not so sure, James. I mean, where’s the evidence?”

“Evidence? What do you need bloody evidence for?”

Sirius sticks his head into a little nook angling out from the wider street—it looks to be a very dark, very narrow alleyway, barely recognizable from the outside and smelling faintly of pot. He pulls James into it without hesitation, and shoves him not-so-gently back into the brick wall of a dilapidated building. When he talks, his voice is gruff and exaggeratedly low, like he’s trying to keep himself calm.

“All I’m saying is—with all this bullshit that’s going on, we can never know what the others are up to. Wormtail—“

“Is our _friend,”_ James finally catches up. “If this is going to be another one of your—“

“ _James_ , just hear me out, please, alright?” Sirius pleads with his eyes, the whites glowering in the hard light of street lamps. His palms are hard and unmoving on James’s shoulders, rather uncomfortable, and James realizes that he’s in fact not struggling to keep _himself_ calm; he’s trying to keep _James_ calm.

James wiggles a little, but otherwise stays quiet.

“Look, when I used to be a spy…” Sirius sighs. “If there was anything I learned from being a spy for those few weeks, it was that nothing was predictable. Absolutely nothing. There aren't just one or two spies out there, there can be many… and sometimes they just happen to be the least expected ones of all, you know? Take, for example, my brother. Regulus—he’s _tiny,_ like he’s literally this tall—“ Sirius waves a hand at a rough estimate of Regulus’s height, close to James’ chin— “and he was the shiest, most impressionable human being I’d ever known. And now, he’s a _spy?_ Working for Albus fucking _Dumbledore?_ What I mean to say is, how did that happen? Moving on—there was a Death Eater in the Order, too. It was quite fortunate that I found out so early on. I informed Dumbledore at once and now the man in concern is ripping himself to shreds in Azkaban. But I can assure you, Dumbledore was shocked. Oh boy, was he _shocked._ He believes everything I say and yet he seemed to’ve been having a fair bit of trouble believing that one of his trusted members was spying on him. So, in conclusion—“

“In conclusion?” James splutters. He sticks out a palm in Sirius's face. “In conclusion, Wormtail is a spy, case closed? Man, you’d have to be damn _thick—“_

“Don’t call me _thick,_ James, I’m just trying to take precautions here—“ Sirius’s grip tightens on his shoulders, so hard it’s digging into his collarbone. “Wormtail is our _Secret Keeper,_ if you’d cared to remember, and you’re just throwing all doubt out the window—“ 

“I’m not _throwing_ anything—“ James shuffles his feet, glaring back.

“We can’t just go home and sleep not knowing if anyone knows our address, just because—“

“ _No_ one knows our address—“

“You want to give them the benefit of the doubt, you’re just—“

“I’m _not_ doing anything like that—“

“—bloody scared to think of any possibility—“

“I’M NOT FUCKING SCARED!”

James finally breaks free of Sirius’s death grip, feet stumbling sideways in nothing less than shock. “I can’t _believe_ you just said I was—“

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

It’s too late. It’s _way_ too late—James has already eloped back to the main street and apparated home, and when he hits the bed, he hears the front door crashing open downstairs, concluding that Sirius decided to follow him home, after all.

 

***

 

He knows something is wrong even before Sirius wakes him up.

“James.” A whisper so faint it’s barely heard more than felt.

James’s eyes blink open.

“Here, James, take this—” The familiar feel of thin wood scrapes against his palm.

He sits up, shaking hair away from his face and finding Sirius in its wake. From what he can make out in the feeble moonlight from outside the window, Sirius’s face is set, hard and determined and very smooth.

There’s subtle noise from downstairs—shoes shuffling on floorboards, laughter ringing down a hallway, a bare hint of a madwoman's cackle.

“Get up,” Sirius says, calm but firm. He tugs on James’s upper-arm once, and James doesn’t need any more prompting. They’re both up and ready in the space of half a second, edging close to the shut door of their bedroom and listening hard for further noise. 

“Where are my baby boyyyys?”

It’s so unmistakably _Bellatrix_ that James is suddenly hit hard with the stark memory of terrible pain. He doesn’t budge, but apparently Sirius still notices something, because then he feels him rub his back briefly.

“You okay?”

“Fuck—I can’t—“ James closes his eyes for a moment. “I can’t believe they actually found out—I don’t know what to say, Sirius—“ He grips his wand harder, disbelieving and furious.

“Shh. You’re not going to say anything." Sirius whispers back, his tone surprisingly warm. "Listen, I’m going to blast this door open in a second, and what we’re going to do is we’re going to attack, and we’re going to get away, simple and easy. Got it?”

They hear Bellatrix and Co. steadily getting closer to the second landing. James sucks in a breath—not that he’s _scared,_ mind, he’s just trying to focus, and he senses Sirius trying to focus at the same time. 

“Boyyysss—“

 _Bang,_ Sirius blasts the door with finesse, spewing a shower of shattered wood in the direction of the staircase. People scream—James does a quick calculation and figures there are about four or five. Not bad.

One of them bellows, “ _Lumos Maxima!_ ” and the sudden light momentarily blinds him that it takes a second longer to follow Sirius out the door.

As he zips a curse or two into the veil of wooden dust before him, a single, vivid-red streak of light zooms straight at him from beyond it. He deflects it just on time, catching Sirius do something similar out the corner of his rather preoccupied eye. He does some more random curses here and there, and when he hears one of them hit a target, he gives a silent whoop.

Everything is going fine while they're making their way down the hallway. Apart from the painful tears springing up in his eyes, the dust settles down alright, and he grabs the chance to attack and throttle one idiotic jangly-mask-wearer who apparently thought he could cough and rub at his own eyes in peace. James doesn’t _kill,_ of course, he doesn’t have quite the time for that. He moves on, leaving the bastard stunned and safe.

Sirius has disappeared further down, his curses echoing vibrantly, his heavy, dull footsteps resounding from already a few steps down the stairs.

"Oh! Playtime!" Bellatrix shrieks. 

"No!" Someone else bellows immediately. "Remember what happened last time—kill him quick and clean, take the other to the Manor—Dark Lord's orders!"

“ _HMPH!"_

Unmistakably Sirius, unmistakably angry. 

James feels the first, actual trickle of fear settle down his spine. He ignores it as he skids the rest of the way down the hallway, frantically throwing a gaze over the metal banister.

Two— _three—_ black-robed figures pin Sirius to the floor, just where the stairs end—all of his limbs and joints and torso, all of everything that moves they’ve gotten pinned down. Bellatrix screeches and twirls in circles in the background, something thin and long poised in her grip that looks an awful lot like Sirius’s wand. James raises his own, about to disarm her in a heartbeat.

_“Look out!”_

James’s entire body slams back into a hard torso, his neck getting clutched tight against it by a thick, revolting arm. His grip around his wand slackens in surprise, and lets go the moment a sharp knock lands on his knuckles.

“Why, hello, boy,” a gruff voice sounds in his ear, breath smelling of oily sweat and something like unwashed baseball caps. Despite being strangled, probably to death, the first thing James is repulsed by is the utter _smell_.

“Hey, I didn’t see you there,” he chokes out, in a vain attempt at physically disarming the smelly offender. “Fancy a proper greeting?”

Another huff of bad breath trickles across the back of his neck, and the arm around him tightens, making his eyes bug out of their sockets.

“Oh, so that’s a no, then?” he grinds out from between clenched teeth, miserably failing to keep his voice steady and sarcastic. He tries not to visibly struggle, but his pride can only go so far. He drives a sharp elbow back into their abdomen, only it barely grazed a rib. He tries again, harder, and when that fails, he kicks back his heel, aiming for the groin and landing on the awkward, fleshy part of the thigh. They don't so much as grunt. 

_“Argh—fucking arseholes!”_

James casts a panicked, watery gaze down, and registers the lithe form of Sirius, writhing violently under the unbreakable hold of exactly three humongous Death Eaters. He hasn’t ever seen Sirius so helpless, so— _utterly_ anguished and out of control, bucking hard against the ever-tightening human shackles and ripping out his own throat in an ear-curdling string of curses. His arm flails free at one point and immediately makes a go for his wand which is being held by a taunting Bellatrix, who only raises it higher and even more out of reach, cooing faux-apologetically. Sirius spits, snarls, and kicks around and misses, yelling so loud and hoarse it almost sounds like he’s crying, like he’s begging.

"Don't stun him!" Bellatrix barks, jumping in to halt a Death Eater who pointed his wand at Sirius. "Make him watch!"

James continues to struggle, even while he feels it only making the situation worse, only knocking the breath out of him faster. The Death Eater chokes him steadily with just one arm, stock-full of steel and cold as death, forcing his head down so it's impossible to look anywhere but at the tortured Sirius.

In the midst, their eyes lock. A sharp, terrible scream rings inside James’ skull, and for a moment, it’s the only sound that exists in the world. 

_JAMES, NO, PLEASE _—_!_

James wheezes, struggling to make the eye-contact last as long as it possibly can. Sirius in gray clothes, Sirius still in his pajamas _—_ the sweatshirt he stole from James and never stopped wearing—James can smell the soft fabric like it’s right in front of his face, can remember so precisely the way it feels when Sirius hugs him in it, would give _anything_  to get a good, last hug…

_I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—_

Sirius’s eyes go impossibly wider, suffused with wild, red-hot desperation and transparent tears. Black pinpricks of death dot James’s vision rapidly, Sirius’s struggling figure a few feet below blurring out at the edges, jerking around powerlessly on that dark-red rug they’re so used to tackling each other on, racing each other on, making love on.

_I love you—don’t you _dare _—__ for _—_ get—_

His grip falters around the Death Eater’s wrist. His shuffling feet come to an abrupt halt. Sirius pleading, Sirius screaming, hoarse, mad, and unintelligible—the last sight James catches before his eyes finally close and his lungs give in, relishing the feeling of magical gold biting into his neck, still somehow cool, still vaguely soothing. It had been Christmas today. Sirius had liked his gift.

 _"JAMES!"_ A despairing call from way back in the background, so far down it's almost quiet. 

_Close your eyes, Si, don't watch, don't watch…_

 

 


	10. Silence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I'm really sorry for that last cliff hanger. I'm not a big fan of cliff hangers myself, so I don't know why I did it. I just decided, it had to cut off there. Just for y'all to get a feel of the actual tension in the scene. Or whatever. Just, I'm sorry.
> 
> I really hope this chapter makes up for it, though, and please comment afterwards because I truly did work hard for this one. In fact, I don't know if I've worked this hard and this fast for a chapter before. (I cried writing it.)
> 
> So. Picking up from the last scene, where James was almost about to die...

10. 

 

 

His lungs hurt and everywhere on his body screams so excruciatingly intensely all over that even James can’t help but wish to hurry up and die.

Someone gives out a loud screech, then, and it just so happens to sound slightly different to Bellatrix that James feels a slight pique of interest despite the dire situation.

There’s a loud gasp followed by a shout, too, sharp and brief and directly piercing James’s ear. James winces, wondering if he’s done something wrong to upset the bastard, when—

“ _James—!”_

James collapses over and wheezes, tumbling into the dark before any of his body parts can resume functioning. He feels the hard edges of stairs jabbing into his torso, his limbs, the side of his head, the air flooding through his throat and once again into his lungs, so forceful and so suddenthat he can’t think for a moment, that all he can feel is the neurons in his poor old brain frying up into shriveled, useless scraps.

His vision finally starts to clear, all bright and wet. Streaks of white cloudy somethings flap violently in midair, about a foot above the floor, where the Death Eater rolls around and bats at the little monster with helpless hands.

“ _What are you doing?_ ” Bellatrix shrieks from down below. “KILL THE BIRD!”

“Get off— _fucking_ —animal—!” The Death Eater has completely released his hold on James now, speech getting cut off with his own scream—so drilling-loud and inhumane that for a second, James just kneels there paralyzed, unable to even look around for his wand. When Whistles finally lets the poor dude go, James is met with the horrible sight of something that looks pretty close to a human face, except with blood-red holes instead of eyes.

“ _What_ is going on? _What_ is going on?” Bellatrix’s cry is what finally snaps James back to reality. The wand rolls out of the blind man’s limp palm, mili-seconds away from falling off the edge of the stairs, and James scrambles to grab it. He feels the welcoming feel of magic returning back into his bloodstream, and he’s still savoring this minor triumph when Bellatrix sets the whole house on Fiendfyre.

Everything goes down to chaos. Rushed footsteps downstairs— _are they fucking getting away?—_ where there must be Sirius among them, too— _are they taking him away?—_ everyone yelling into the bright-hot heat and smoke, which begin to scorch their skin unforgivingly. James grits his teeth and flies down the stairs.

_If they apparate before he gets to them—_

_—Bang—_

He’s almost knocked out cold with dread by the apparition sound; just about slumps down on the stairs across four or five steps, when he registers a second _bang,_ and now he’s completely baffled as to what’s happening.

“ _Sirius—”_ James tries to call out but coughs and heaves instead, his eyes and lungs now searing in smoke. Good thing he knows a couple of handy nonverbal spells, including the _Aguamenti_ charm, because the sudden, cold drench on his pajamas and a shower of steam clearing away the smoke is nothing short of an immediate relief.

Not wasting any time, he jumps the rest of the feet toward the ground floor, and scrambles up to scan the area.

_If they’ve taken him already, I’ll fucking—_

“James.” A weak, hoarse splutter from James’s left—a huge cloud of coal-black smoke reaching all the way to the ceiling, snarling and ever-present, and— _Sirius is in there._

With another mental utterance of _Aguamenti,_ he finds Sirius in the middle of a cool, frizzling steam-cloud, sprawled across the black-singed carpet and clutching his wand, heaving heavily and very, very alive.

“James,” he utters again, and cranes his head to look at him.

There’s a magical moment when their eyes meet: a certain, electric current-ish feeling, an instantaneous, relief-flooded understanding that sizzles within their shared bubble of cool water in the center of a burning house. It only lasts for half a second, before Sirius is rolling sideways andcoughing up.

James rushes in and kneels down, reaching for Sirius’s face to rake the soot-coated hair away.

“Sirius—are you—where are—“

“‘Ey’re gone—‘Ames—“ Sirius ducks his face, giving a few more retches to clear his windpipe of smoke and water. James frantically grabs his shoulders.

“We should probably get away from here—“

Something heavy lands on his shoulder, and he blinks when he finds Whistles perched atop it—for fucking _once_. It’s always been Sirius.

“You little bitch,” James says a tad affectionately, which really is a first regarding the owl. “You saved my life.” He grabs a bunch of cotton from the upper hem of his pajama to wipe the blood off her beaks. Whistles’ shifts her wings a bit, and it tickles the hair on his nape. James gives a faint chuckle.

“James—“ Sirius’s hand brushes against his wrist. James looks down to find him looking back, pale but otherwise looking alright, a strange, soft gaze fixed on his eyes. James takes his hand.

Sirius tugs on it in an effort to sit up, but winces harshly and slumps back down.

“Sirius—?“

That’s when James finally thinks to do a full-body check on Sirius, and spots a pool of thick, red blood streaming out from a deep gash on his right thigh.

“Oh, _shit_ —“ mumbles James, immediately reaching out to peel away a flap of ripped material, peering beneath it in horror.

“James _—_ “

“What happened? What is this? How did they hurt you—“

“ _James—”_

“It’s not _poison,_ is it—? I mean, it doesn’t look particularly—“

“ _James fucking Potter.”_

“What?”

“I’m glad you’re alive.”

Sirius’s close-lipped smile is dazed, wonderstruck, and definitely painless, closed eyes selfishly indicating how he doesn’t plan to move another inch for the rest of the night.

James is inclined to snort but instead kind of gets choked up, and blames it on the smoke still building up only a couple of feet away. The fire roars and spits around their little ball of cooling steam, James’ poor _Aguamenti_ charm obviously struggling to hold up, as he scrambles for a broken shard of wood lying around to turn into a Portkey.

 

***

 

The housekeeping elf’s name, James learns, is Kickers. James’ conclusion is that this is pretty ironic, given how much of a tame and nervous wreck the elf is the entire time James orders him around, demanding for dittany essence and cotton wads and clean bandages.

“Does this look enough?” James growls, rolling the single, thin bandage roll in his palm. “Tell me, does this look enough to you? You saw the injury yourself, am I right?”

Kickers whimpers, already retreating three step down the hallway.

“Sir, yes—sir, I did, indeed, sir. I will bring more in right now, please, sir…”

A half hour later, James looks around the room and is rather proud of getting it all tidied up: the windowsill cleared of mold, seventeen rolls of bandages gathered together in the corner, and a painless-looking Sirius laid comfortably on the bed, donning a dry sweatshirt and resting a clean, cotton-secured wound on his upper thigh. A slim moon peeks through the curtains, casting feathered shadows across the features of his sleeping face.

James would keep staring at him for ages, really, _days_ if possible, but Dumbledore seems to think this wouldn’t be a great idea. James had been summoned to an emergency Order meeting (for obvious reasons) and when he checks his watch, he realizes he’s two minutes late. He looks back at Sirius’s half-smiling, injured, sleeping form, and gets into a rather hot debate with himself on whether to wake him up and tell him where he’s going or not—but eventually, he settles on the latter. There wouldn’t be any reason to disturb him, James decides; he will be back so soon that Sirius will never notice he’d been gone at all.

 

***

 

Wormtail isn’t at the meeting.

Everyone stares at James, especially Remus. James does a big yawn and makes a point to stretch in his seat for longer than necessary, in hopes that everyone will be considerate enough to not ask questions or waste his time on meaningless condolences. He’s rather tired, and he plans to get back to the Leaky Cauldron the second the meeting is adjourned.

Slumping back on his tall chair, he closes his eyes halfway as he lends a reluctant ear to Dumbledore’s droning.

“…Another spy among us, yet again…or the Secret Keeper has been tortured to give the address…implore you to be mindful of anyone who acts strangely…rash decisions when you need to trust someone…”

The ‘emergency’ meeting ends in the usual fashion, which is to say it had no tangible meaning whatsoever except “be careful, you idiots,” and James is fucking ready to leave when Remus grabs his arm.

“ _What?”_

“James, what happened?”

“Dumbledore _told_ everyone, weren’t you listening—“

“Is Sirius alright?”

“Yes. Got splinched on the thigh, but otherwise fine.”

“It’s Wormtail, right?” Remus suddenly lowers his voice.

James freezes. He turns to acknowledge him. “You knew?” he says, tone perhaps more accusatory than necessary.

“I guessed. It’s not hard, you know. Considering it’s you and Sirius, the Secret Keeper must have been either me or Peter. And since it wasn’t me—“

“It _could_ have been you, Rem. Not that I’m blaming you or anything, but you—“

“Refused, I know. I mean, I can see myself refusing. I’m a werewolf, James, that’s not a very safe option for keeping secrets. But now…I wish I’d agreed...“

“Oh Moons, please, don’t,” James says, brusquely, and leaves.

 

***

 

He swings the door open, wincing as it creaks. If Sirius happens to wake up from the sound, he will literally hunt that Kickers elf down himself and stand over him until he finishes greasing the hinges twice over.

Well, never mind that. James’ trail of imagination is silenced abruptly when he sees that Sirius is already awake, standing smack in the middle of the room, straight as a rod.

“Si—“

James stops short. The door thumps closed behind him by itself. Sirius still doesn’t turn around; his line of sight fixed on the space mere feet in front of him, the space in which _another_ James stands, clutching at an invisible rope around his neck and choking horribly. James winces, automatically figuring out the situation.

“Sirius—“

Sirius doesn’t budge. James walks up to him a bit before he halts again, this time in shock to find that Sirius is actually crying.

Perhaps crying would not be the right word. ‘Crying’ wouldn’t even nearly describe the way the tears steadily flood out of the wells of Sirius’s eyes, not in the form of what you’d call tear-tracks, but in open _rivers_ , so wide and so fast it’s impossible to tell where the edges are; or the way he sobs in utter silence, to the point that James can hear his own breathing too clearly; or the way his shoulders don’t so much as shake, his posture rock-solid and firm and looking so strong only a second ago when James still couldn’t see his face. Sirius’s teeth visibly clench and unclench, and when James looks down, he sees his fist gripping his wand in a similar fashion. His knuckles are impossibly white and his wrist is shaking slightly, as if unsure of _what_ to do but dying to do _something._

James offers a hand to wrap around his shaking fist. He raises it, then, and Sirius’s wand lifts with it, all of a sudden limp in his grip.

“ _Ridikkulus,_ ” James whispers, not even once glancing anywhere else but at Sirius’s face. The wardrobe rattles softly, rather like leaves in a late-autumn wind, which assures James that the horror is now safely gone.

Sirius’s face doesn’t react one bit. His eyes are glazed, not looking anywhere _outside_ but looking _inside_ , where the memory of watching James slowly die is burned into it with blackened soot.

Not knowing what to say and hating himself for it, James shifts forward and turns so that now he’s properly face-to-face with Sirius’s horror-struck, surprisingly vulnerable expression. Taking his face in his hands, he swipes his thumbs across those smooth, wet, porcelain cheeks that usually look so tough and unbreakable. When Sirius finally gives out a noise, it’s nothing but a weak sniff. 

“Shh, it’s okay. I’m here,” James whispers, over and over again. When his hands start to get uselessly wet, he summons a handkerchief from thin air and resumes wiping Sirius’s face with it instead.

“That was stupid,” Sirius says shakily, trying to face away.

“What? No.”

James holds his head still, and keeps pushing him steadily backwards until they both land on the bed. Sirius’s arm tries to shove the handkerchief away, and when James insists, he says, “stop.”

“Why?”

“I just—James—just stop it.”

Reluctantly, confusedly, James disappears the square of cloth. He suddenly feels like crying, only he can’t cry silently like Sirius can, and having Sirius see him cry is probably the last thing he wants at the moment, so he simply bites on his tongue until the sourness ebbs away.

Sirius’s tears have stopped flowing by now, his panicked expression having been replaced by something close to indifference—or was it disgust?

“A fucking boggart—I can’t even deal with a fucking _boggart,_ now? Did you drug me with something, James?”

“What?”

Alarmed, James sits slightly taller on the edge of the bed. “I haven’t drugged you with anything.”

Sirius seems to not hear him. He lies down slowly on his back, curls in on himself, and rolls the other way. James thinks he’s gone back to sleep and is feeling his lips beginning to twist sourly, when Sirius suddenly blurts out.

“It was the necklace.”

“What?”

“The necklace.”

Still facing the other way, Sirius raises an absent hand and hooks his fingers twice, gesturing for James to lie down with him. James does.

A few moments later, Sirius must have decided on something, because he shifts around and finally faces James. His fingers reach out to James’s neck and brushes against the soft skin. When they pull back, the gold chain is looped around his index finger.

“This,” he says, lifting it up slightly so it catches the tender moonlight.

“What about that?”

“It almost killed you,” says Sirius, quietly.

“What?”

James is tired of saying _what,_ really, but sometimes Sirius gets into one of those moods, where he doesn’t clarify anything or bother to explain, but merely talks in riddles and expects James to understand. When it happens, James simply has to keep asking ‘what. _’_

Sirius sighs a bit, like he’s exasperated that James doesn’t understand his insider reference or something, which to be fair, _no one_ would understand.

“When we started dueling—I felt this— _thing,_ you know, like I got electrocuted or something. It lasted about one second; I didn’t know what’d happened. But the next moment, when I was done being paralyzed, I’d already been caught by three Death Eaters. It was pathetic,” Sirius says, like he’s trying to laugh, only his voice cracks a bit. James’ gold chain twirls loosely between his fingers, which Sirius chooses to stare at instead of James. “It was this. This necklace—it was telling me that you were in trouble. Never mind that _I_ was in trouble as well, you know. It was quite inconvenient, really.”

“Oh,” says James dumbly, absentmindedly reaching for his own neck to find the clasp. _Inconvenient?_ James takes it to mean ‘take it off.’

“What are you doing? _No._ ” Sirius’s hand jumps to close around his wrist.

“No?”

“It saved me, too,” says Sirius, slowly. “Bellatrix was going to take me away to the Manor. If they couldn’t kill you, at least they could go home with half the trophy, right? Well, they couldn’t. You had Fiendfyre all around you, so the necklace burned again, and I was ready this time. As soon as I got apparated, I disapparated back home— _without_ my wand, even though I ended up getting splinched. When I was back in the house, I somehow had my wand back with me… It was fantastic.”

James smiles timidly. He isn’t exactly sure why Sirius is suddenly raving about the gold chain, but he’s willing to go with it if that’s what Sirius needs.

“Oh. That’s…good,” he says uncertainly. “For a moment I… I thought you’d been kidnapped.” His stomach twists uncomfortably when he thinks about it, how something like that really _could_ have happened.

“I know.” Sirius’s gaze finally lifts.

Their eyes meet.

Sirius’s pupils glisten darkly beneath a thick film of wetness, all big and intensely round and looking rather lost. “For a moment I thought _you’d_ —“

James waits patiently, but Sirius never finishes the sentence. Instead, he gives a sort of cough and looks away.

“I know,” James says, this time, and moves in to wrap an arm around his torso. He hides his face in the crook of Sirius’s neck where it can’t be seen, then closes his eyes to fight back all his miserable anguish, his remorse, his rage at himself.

They both know very well what could have happened. And if everything _had_ happened, they both know very well it would have all been James’ fault.

 

***

 

The next day passes by in near-silence. Sirius isn’t supposed to set even a single foot outside until his splinch wound completely heals, and James isn’t supposed to go out without him, either. It’s not like Sirius _says_ “don’t go”; it’s just that James can tell Sirius doesn’t want him to leave. Not after that boggart incident.

James doesn’t exactly get to shout at Kickers, because he has to be considerate of Sirius’s presence who's just inside the room, but he gives him a good telling-off about the boggart and gets him to bring in another, boggart-free wardrobe. He also demands for clean sets of muggle clothes from a nearby department store, because he has no plans of wearing those stale-smelling frilly dress robes found in their closet. He’s aware of how ridiculous that sounds, the idea of a house-elf going into a muggle store, but Kickers is so full of fear of James by now that his frightened ‘yes, sir’ is nothing short of expected. Kickers is an elf _,_ anyway; as useless as he may be, he probably has a _few_ tricks up his sleeve.

A short while later, James and Sirius are able to splurge themselves with a mountain of free, brand new muggle wear to choose from and a huge selection of muggle music on Sirius’s ‘play list,’ altogether making it not too hard to distance themselves from the wizarding world for the time being. Sirius settles on a snug pair of plain sweatpants, given he can’t exactly move his legs much, but James is a bit eager to experiment around. He strikes up a mini fashion show whereby he tries on pair after pair, shirt after shirt, and poses around dramatically while Sirius offers feedback on every single outfit. Sirius decides he likes the ripped blue jeans the best on James. “Good and tight,” he describes it, but doesn’t elaborate when James pushes.

A particularly good song comes up on Sirius’s portable speaker, no doubt banging across the entire floor if not the entirety of the Leaky Cauldron, and James rolls off the bed to dance. He sings along to the parts he knows and flies his arms in the air, swinging his hips this way and that. When he catches Sirius looking at somewhere around his arse, James swings his hips a bit more, intentionally facing his tight, jeans-clad butt in Sirius’s way, and catches him looking even harder. It’s obvious that he’s itching to get up and dance, too, or shag James against the wall or something equally as stupidly dangerous. So just after a short while, James flops back onto the bed again, dismissing any of Sirius’s temptations.

They don’t talk much. Sirius laughs a bit when, while he’s finishing the rest of their Chinese takeout, James tries on one of the muggle dresses for him (obviously, Kickers wouldn’t have known—James can only imagine his reaction when he realizes he’d gotten James and Sirius attire for _women_ ), and pops in a dirty joke here and there when James is up and dancing, but otherwise he’s just silent. Almost like he’s retreated into his own world, except there’s hardly a moment when he’s not staring intently at James.

James asks “what,” of course, perhaps more than just a few times.

—“What’s wrong?”

—“What happened?”

—“What are you staring at?”

Sometimes Sirius shakes his head, other times he simply ignores the question altogether. When this happens, James just moves in and cuddles him, not initiating any conversation but just sticking to his side, smelling him, feeling him, letting him know he’s there. He knows they will be assigned new missions once Sirius heals, and free time like this would be few and far between. He knows they will be back in serious danger soon, even before he can fully register it happening, and he knows how much he _doesn’t_ know about what can or can not happen. He can only hope.

At the end of the day, he’s unwrapping the bandages from Sirius’s thigh for the third or fourth time. The wound still looks quite bad; _it’s just a splinch,_ he keeps telling himself, _nearly everyone gets splinched when they’re starting out on apparition._ Yet, there’s a voice inside him that’s impossible to ignore. It has been reprimanding him for the entire day, rising in volume, ripping him apart inside out. One moment, it would be threatening to flood out in the form of sobs, and the next moment, it'd be squeezing James’ heart into a pulp and making him slightly breathless. When Sirius eventually notices, he asks “what,” and it’s James that has to shrug this time around.

“Nothing.”

Sirius huffs, expression guarding itself all over again. James hates seeing it do that, but lets it go for right now.

“Hold still,” he says firmly, and shifts on the bed so he’s sitting right beside Sirius and their knees are brushing against each other.

Cautiously, James takes the cotton tip dipped in dittany essence and dabs once at the wound. It’s done in the lightest way he can possibly manage, with his free hand holding Sirius's shoulder in reassurance and everything, but that doesn’t stop Sirius from wincing. The wince is very slight; just a small twitch on the corner of his lips, so small that James _almost_ doesn’t catch it. But he _does._ And it just so happens to be _just_ enough for everything inside him to break down at once.

He knew it was going to happen. He knew. It was only a matter of _when._

He can feel the contours of his face twisting itself, can feel the sourness in his jaw about to let out a sob or two or a hundred. His head bends low while his hands move mechanically to finish re-wrapping the wound with clean bandage, all crisp and tight and secure, before he stands up to put all the materials away on the bedside table and takes a few quick steps to stand by the window. He’s properly crying by now. He can only hope to calm down before Sirius sees. Sirius doesn’t deserve to see. It’s not _Sirius_ that has to deal with James’s bullshit. Sirius should be the _last_ person who has to ever deal with bullshit—he’s already dealt with so much. So much from _James._

“James,” Sirius says, from across the room. It’s not a ‘ _James?’_ but a ‘ _James,’_ like he already knows what’s going on. That doesn’t help, really. Self-hatred boils loudly in his stomach, and James clenches his teeth to force it down, determined not to let out a single suspicious noise.

He wrenches his focus onto the scenery stretching out beyond the window.

They’re staying on the third floor, which gives somewhat of a bird’s-eye view of Diagon Alley. There’s barely any people out; no one is out anymore once it’s dark. Attacks rarely happen in densely magically populated areas like Diagon, but that doesn’t keep people from being scared. There’s a dog walking by itself down below—James imagines it's a stray—strutting silently across the otherwise deserted cobblestones, keeping its head lowered and tail down and perhaps growling softly. He’s never seen a dog look so… Well, perhaps _sad_ wasn’t the right word, but ‘forlorn.’ In fact, he’s never seen Diagon Alley look so sad. _He_ hasn’t ever been this sad. Forlorn. Whatever.

That’s when the first sob goes.

“James.”

He knows he should have taken the whole Secret Keeper thing more seriously. He should have listened to Sirius when he was warning him about Wormtail. He should have woken Sirius up before he left for that Order meeting, so he wouldn’t mistake boggart James for real James. Or no, he should have checked inside the fucking wardrobe himself before he ever went to that stupid meeting. He should have…he should have.

The second sob slips out.

“James, come here.”

James can’t help the rush of raw, unfettered self-hatred and remorse taking over all of him, quickening his heart rate and cutting his circulation short. Both his hands clutch tight on the windowsill as he now doubles over, eyes squeezing tight as he waits and waits and waits for it to die down. He knows it will. _Just one more second._ Just one more. _Give me one more, Sirius, and I’ll be fine, I promise._

“James,” Sirius says, his voice somehow audible over the current roaring inside James. “I said come here.”

“J-just…Give me a moment,” James sniffs as quietly as possible. “I… I’ll be fine.”

“If you don’t come here in three, I’m going to get up and walk over,” Sirius says. “And I really don’t want to get up.”

“No, d-don’t—“

“One.”

James stares intently at the dog down below, just about to slip around the corner.

“Two.”

James narrows his eyes to focus on the form of a snowy owl in a cage by a shop window.

“Thr—“

James swivels around and paces across the room blindly, hand landing hard on Sirius’s shoulder.

“I said _don’t._ “

Sirius immediately wraps an arm around James’s waist and pulls him down on the bed. James feels slightly winded. For a moment, he can’t think—he can only blink rapidly, turn his face away, and resume his fruitless struggle to calm down.

“It’s okay, James,” Sirius whispers, his arm still around James’s waist. A second arm joins the first. “It’s okay. Let it all out. You can let it all out on me.”

Sirius’s tone is as soft as ever, so un-judging, so…patient. His arms are firm around James’ middle as Sirius leans in to press his face against James’ hair, breathing deeply and waiting for him to finish, whatever it is he’s struggling with, however long it’s going to take.

James lets it all out, just like Sirius said. He tries to convey so many things at once—s _orry, give me a moment, I just need one moment, Sirius—_ all of them all at once, that it all ends up gushing out in a single, unintelligible, garbled noise at the back of his throat. He cries, perhaps not entirely soundlessly, wrapped in Sirius’s warmth and supported by Sirius’s voice as it continues to whisper stuff into his neck—stuff James can’t really concentrate on.

“I’m s-sorry,” he rasps out, hands unknowingly clutching around Sirius’s wrist and holding it tight against his abdomen. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apolo—“

“No. I have to apologize. I _should_ apologize.” James heaves in a single gulp-ful of air, and finally decides to turn around. Sirius gets the gist of it and moves away—his face away from James’s hair, his arms away from James’s waist, giving James enough space to breathe and think and get all the words out in the correct order.

“I’m sorry,” James says again, bringing himself to look properly at Sirius. His eyes are watery gray, in their usual almond shapes and usual perfect eyelashes, but somewhat looking a bit softer than usual.

James bites down on his tongue and continues. “I should have… listened to you. I always don’t listen to you. I didn’t listen to you when you said you couldn’t trust our Secret Keeper to be W-Wormtail,” his voice catches at the name, now tasting utterly foreign on his tongue. “I didn’t listen to you when you said you were tired, that you couldn’t tell me what your mission was. I didn’t like that you weren't telling me, so I pushed you. I kicked you out. I didn’t listen to you.” With that scene down, James’s mind’s eye reels forward to yet another time he failed to listen to Sirius. “Even after going to Moony’s yesterday, and all he said about Wormtail. I didn’t listen to you, then, either, Sirius. You told me you were suspicious of him, that you were only trying to be careful to protect the both of us. You were right. I was wrong. I almost. I almost killed the both of us.”

James struggles to keep himself in track, gulping down air and still keeping a little space from Sirius so his smell alone won’t dissolve him into a tearful mess again. Sirius doesn’t yet open his mouth to talk, but waits with a calm, open expression until James is finished with everything he’s got to say. James feels a rush of gratitude.

“Then you—you said I was just being scared.”

Now Sirius _does_ open his mouth.

James shakes his head quickly.

“N-no, Sirius. No. You said I was scared, and you were right, Sirius, you were right. You know what? I _was_ scared. I think you knew how scared I was. I was even scared to think about how scared I was feeling. Sirius, I was a mess. I still am.”

James isn’t expecting to see a smile form on Sirius’s lips. It’s not big and wide, not anything like that—just a sort of curl at the edge of his lips. He leans back slightly and surveys James’s entire face, gentle eyes landing last on James’s eyes.

“Thanks, James.”

“I’m sorry, Sirius. I love you. You know I do. I’ve just been doing a piss-poor job at showing it. I swear I’ll do better. I’ll be more…considerate. Smarter. Sirius… Will you forgive me?” James feels the tears burning again, in the temples, in the bridge of his nose, around the jaw.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Sirius says firmly, then stays silent for a while. He reaches out and combs James’s fringe out of his face, sticky with tears.Then he ruffles his hair a bit and, out of the blue, says, “let me tell you a story.”

He lies down on the sheets, stretches, and pulls James down with him.

 

***

 

“…He kept raving on about Gryffindor. I didn’t know what was so special about Gryffindor, but whatever, I pretended like I did, just so I could keep up with him.”

“So…Did you have another house in mind? Hufflepuff, maybe?”

“No offense to Hufflepuff. But they’re kind of lame.”

“Right. So, Ravenclaw.”

“Ravenclaw. Maybe. I didn’t know. Just not Slytherin. Just not the same old, predestined path as my family. Well, lo and behold, I ended up getting into Gryffindor. I was happy, I guess. I mean, I didn’t really mind. But some things were getting under my skin, like how people stared at me in the corridors and stuff, or ran away if I so much as neared them. Whereas if I’d been put in Slytherin, they wouldn’t have spared me a second glance.”

“But what about Prongs?”

“See, here’s the thing. Prongs didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t mind one bit that I was from the Black bloodline. I was so talented at every subject at school and I’d even made it to the Quidditch team in first year that Prongs only cared to drool after _me_ , not my fucking blood.”

“Hey! I did not _drool—_ ”

“All the years passed by in a blur. They were so amazing, each day. Every fucking day. At least, it was like that for the first few years, except during the holidays when I had to stay with my family. Life was good.”

“That good?”

“That good.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, see, you’ve got to understand that… Prongs had a bit of an obsession. A pretty unhealthy obsession, I’d say, and that’s if I were to put it nicely. He fancied this certain redhead in the same year. But this redhead—she wasn’t interested in him. At all. In fact, she hated him.”

“Oh come on, I wouldn’t go _that_ far.“

“But he insisted he liked her. In fact, he was convinced he was in love with her, that she would be the love of his life. In second year, when he first starting saying things like that, I would just laugh my head off and wait until he looked properly offended. But then it went on, in third year a fair bit, then in fourth year, then in fifth year, really, really hard. I mean, he asked her out almost every single day. Whenever they had class together, he’d ask her out, unless she hexed him first or ran away to her friends and flat-out ignored him.”

“That sounds a bit obsessive, doesn’t it?”

“‘Obsessive’ wouldn’t cover it. I don’t think you understand how pathetic it all looked to me.”

“Why did it look pathetic to you?”

“Because I saw how Prongs was ignoring the obvious. He was ignoring what was right in front of him and went after a girl who never even looked at him—“

“She did _look_ at me—“

“He was ignoring that he’d really be better off being with his best mate.”

“Did he ever stop ignoring it?”

“Yeah, he did. Summer before six year. My parents were abusing me yet again, to the point that I thought I’d developed an immunity toward the Cruciatus.”

“Wait—hold on—you’re _immune_ to the Cruciatus?”

“Probably. Wouldn’t be willing to test it out anytime soon, though. Anyway, I decided the time was ripe. I ran away from home.”

“…Oh. Where did you go?”

“Where do you think?”

“Prongs?”

“Prongs. Obviously. Only choice I had. If I had any other place I could go to,I would have gone there instead.”

“That’s not tr—“

“I was a mess that night. I was…afraid. I didn’t regret having run away, but I had no idea what would happen to me from then on. Prongs’ parents seemed nice enough, but I’d never gotten to know them well. I knew I’d have Hogwarts for the next two years, but had no idea how to move on from there without any inheritance and without any family connections, since they’d cut ties with me and all. Bust mostly, I was afraid for my brother. He’d been hanging out with the sketchy lot lately, and I wondered if he’d completely go out of his mind once I left, and had no one to talk sense into him.”

“He didn’t, though?”

“He didn’t. But that’s another story. That night, well, I’d never been as scared shitless as I was that night. I couldn’t even tell why I was that excessively anxious, but I was. And you know what Prongs did?”

“What?”

“He just stayed. We sat on the couch by the fireplace. He’d lit it for me. Never mind that it was three in the morning, and he was confused and tired. He held me until I’d fallen asleep. A couple days later, we got together.”

“Whoa. That quick, huh?”

“It might’ve been quick, but it seemed to me like the most natural thing in the world. I’d never been on a long-term relationship before, but I didn’t feel so apprehensive about it. I knew it’d work out, somehow.”

“Well, did it work out?”

“Yeah, I guess. And no. But mostly, yes.”

“Why ‘no?’”

“The war. There was a war going on. By the time we graduated from school, it was all over the place. People were dying…they were being killed by the likes of my ex-family, and I didn’t like it one bit. Prongs and I, we reacted differently to the situation, and sometimes we had misunderstandings. Prongs liked to be impulsive, figuring things out along the way and hoping everything worked out. On the other hand, I tried to be as careful as possible—where I was, who I hung out with, who I trusted.”

“Who did you trust?”

“Prongs. I trusted him.”

“‘Trust- _ed?’_ As in past tense? _”_

“Sorry, ‘ _trust.’_ Present tense.”

“So you still trust him now?”

“I still trust him now. We’ve had some misunderstandings, but we’ve already settled his side of the story. Now I want to settle my side of things with him.”

“What do you mean, _your_ side of things?”

“He was always a confident bloke, perhaps too sure of himself, maybe _too much_ of a model Gryffindor. He still is.”

“What has that got to do _anything_ with—“

“Admitting that he was scared was probably the hardest thing he’s ever done.”

“… I… that’s…”

“So now I’ve got to admit to him all the things _I’m_ scared of. Despite being a good and proud Gryffindor, I mean. I’m scared of the war. I’m scared of the possibilities, what it could do, how much ruin it’ll bring. I’m scared of it never ending, or at least lasting for a very long time. I’m scared of losing the ones I’ve come to grow close to, losing my friends, but most of all losing Prongs. I’m scared of… I’m scared of losing him before I ever get around to telling him that I love him.”

“…Sirius?”

“I love you.”

 

 

 

 

 

 


	11. Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wow. Now this fic has taken a dark turn :(

11.

 

 

“Shit.” James’s mouth hangs open and stays there, fingers brushing the glass on their own accord.

“Sick,” Sirius agrees.

The twigs are polished piece by piece by hand, slick with air-resistant oil and trimmed to a needle point. James can fucking _imagine_ it flying just by looking at it, the way how the sharp-edged handle will pierce the air and split it apart, how it’ll feel like lying flat on top of it with your knees tucked high, being one with the wind.

“Can you—“ _Can you imagine how it’ll feel?_ He’s about to ask, but is stopped short by a pair of eyes already looking straight back at him. “What?”

Sirius’s grin is warm, much warmer than the usual smirk. He’s actually smiling, and since James has no idea why, it should be uncanny, but it isn’t.

“C’mon, Pads, look at this fucking broom!”

“I did,” Sirius says simply, gaze unwaveringly on James. He steps closer until their shoulders brush. “There are better things to look at, don’t you know?”

James blushes, which makes Sirius’s grin go wider.

“So you want to be stuck on this broom for the rest of the day or you fancy leaving for a drink?”

“Er.” James clears his throat. “Drink.”

The door tingles as Sirius swings it forward, his free hand catching James by the small of his back. James steps outside first, slipping his fists into his oversized coat pockets against the cold.

“It’s freezing,” James says as Sirius falls into step beside him easily.

Sirius’s hand squeezes James’ shoulder, and suddenly a wave of warmth runs through his body, from his ear-tips down to his numb toes.

“Show off,” James says, mildly disgruntled by the display of Sirius’s scary ability in nonverbal charms.

Three seconds, four seconds, pass by, and James finally finds it in himself to blurt out. “Padfoot, we’re not exactly supposed to…”

“Supposed to what?”

“You know what I’m talking about. This… Er. Intimacy. Thingie. In public. Being intimate.”

“Fuck intimacy,” Sirius says abruptly with more passion than expected. It silences James for the moment.

 _Fuck intimacy,_ it repeats inside his head, and it has a ring to it that’s admittedly pretty neat. His coat feels very warm already.

 

***

 

Sirius’s lips still taste mildly of butterbeer when they start making out at the crack of dark. The alley is still mildly populated, the idea of public sex just the right bit enticing.

Sirius efficiently crowds James against the brick wall and James growls, grabbing at Sirius’s hair. The Cloak slips a little on both their shoulders.

“Prongs,” Sirius growls back, palms already at work on James’s arse. “Fuck, these _jeans.”_

“What jeans?” James asks innocently. In truth, he’d deliberately chosen to wear that exact jeans Sirius said he’d liked a week ago. Dark blue, ripped, and with a twist - it’s goddarn _tight_.

“You know, Prongs. You know.”

“What do I know?” James grins maniacally, feeling his dimples pierce the corners of his mouth and catching Sirius eye them.

“These jeans—“ Sirius laps his tongue into one of the dimples. “What they - fucking - _do_ to me.” His mouth now lands on the shell of James’ ear, buried beneath layers of thick scarf. James wriggles a bit, leaning into the sensation and struggling to escape from it at the same time. Sirius’s hum sends a pleasureful shiver through his neck.

“Tell me - what do they— _oh—_ what do they do to you?”

Sirius doesn’t answer. His teeth keep nibbling and his hips arch up, pressing an especially assertive hard-on against James’s abdomen, but his hands stop kneading James’s arse. When James twists his head in search for another kiss, he misses spectacularly.

“Now tell me - which side do you keep it in, right or left?” Sirius says, shoving his prick into the cut of James’ hip.

James shudders, half confused and half massively turned on.

“What - do you mean?”

“I say left,” Sirius breathes, a hand now sliding down to James’ crotch and _past_ it, down James’ left thigh. “Bingo.”

James shouts, blanking out at the sudden contact on his cock. Sirius’s hand brushes against it, back and forth, exploding stars in the back of James’ eyelids and making his knees forget how to stand up straight.

“Nghhhh, S-Sirius -” His fingers dig deeper into Sirius’s shoulders. His eyes roll back in his head, marveling at another _zing_ of pleasure as Sirius’s circles James’ bulge with a curious thumb.

“Yeah, I was right. I guessed, and I got it right. Oh, fucking yeah,” Sirius chants, speeding up his rutting but not doing much about James’ cock except _very_ light touching, like he’s neglecting it on purpose. “I’ve been wondering all day. Watching these motherfucking jeans, watching you move in them, wondering ‘now where is he keeping his dick?’ I kept imagining what I’d do to you once I found out, whether I’d take it out and jerk you off or chain you to the wall and make _you_ watch me jerk myself off -“

James swears.

“- Or,” Sirius halts, a smirk spreading across his lips.

James’ own lips pucker themselves and finally receive a kiss, short and barely there.

“Or I can blow you. Right here, in the middle of Diagon Alley, where anyone can hear you. Fuck, I can blow you _over_ these useless muggle jeans until you can’t take it anymore, until you fucking scream, and beg me to take them off, see if you like that.”

“Sh-shit,” James gasps, struggling to absorb everything that Sirius just said. “F-fuck, Pads, just _do_ it.”

“Do you want it? Tell me you want it.”

James stutters, hands already pushing Sirius insistently down. Sirius kneels obligingly, his face already so close to James’ crotch that James can fucking _feel_ him, feel his warm breath sighing softly over the needy bulge in James’ pants.

“ _Sirius,_ ” James prompts. His cock feels too fucking tight already, and Sirius doesn’t even seem to be halfway done with satisfying his teasing kink, what the _fuck_.

Sirius does one experimental lick on the fabric, just lightly on the tip of the bulge.

“Sirius, fucking - come _on,”_ James moans raggedly, hands shaking Sirius’s shoulders a little.

Sirius flashes a glare up at him, and all of a sudden James’ arms are flung upward, metal clasping itself tightly around his wrists and locking them against the rough brick wall.

“ _Fuck - you!”_

“Don’t be rude, Potter.”

James’ feet shuffle wildly on the jagged cobblestones, watching Sirius as he continues to lick and suck at James’ bulge - which, mind, happens to be _still_ somehow layered with the fucking denim - mildly and innocently, acting cute and all and driving James nuts.

“Sirius - _fucking tease.”_

“I’m not going to blow you until you tell me,” Sirius hums, barely audible what with his lips closed around the damp fabric. James can fucking feel his own cock pulsing against Sirius’s mouth, can feel it _pushing_ into the softness on its own accord.

“What? T-tell you what?” he splutters. His hips shift off the wall, guiding his cock to press against Sirius more firmly.

“I already said. Tell me you want it, Prongs. Just tell me you want it.”

Sirius leans back, mouth now completely off James’ jeans. His gaze meets James’, glittering with challenge _._

“Fuck,” says James, tipping his head back because he can’t _stand_ to see Sirius like that while not being touched by him. His cock quivers in barely contained anticipation. His eyes squeeze shut.

A few seconds pass by, in which Sirius doesn’t move and James simply heaves in the cold air, feeling his skin bristle against the breeze.

“I want it,” he whispers into space.

“Hmm? Not sure if I caught that,” drifts Sirius’s voice from below.

James is irritated even as he was expecting just that kind of response.

“ _Fuck.”_ His fists clench against the wall as his eyelids flare open, bowing his head to glare at Sirius as fiercely as he can, before everything he’s wanting to say, everything he’s keeping inside himself tumble out of his lips in a single gush. “ _I want it. Sirius. Do it. Fucking please. Blow me. I want it. Please.”_

Finally, finally, the evil on Sirius’s face vanishes and he looks the right bit turned on, his throat bobbing and his fingers trailing automatically for the button in James’s jeans.

“Oh - yes -“

Sirius opens the zip slowly downward, clasp by tiny clasp, eyes fixed on the process as if it’s his first time undressing someone or something.

Noting that James in fact hasn’t bothered to wear boxers, Sirius blinks once in surprise. He has the capacity to snigger then, never mind that his pupils are blown up wide and his lips already parted in anything but mirth.

“ _James_ , I can’t believe you didn’t wear -“

“I fucking know I didn’t wear boxers, alright? Now blow me, _please_ , before I pass out - _ohhhh_ “

Sirius starts at a fast pace. It seems like the teasing phase is finally over now, thankfully, because now Sirius is in full-on, make-James-come-as-fast-as-possible mode, rubbing his tongue on the tip of his prick and sucking on the entire upper-half in eye-crossing succession.

“Oh, fucking _please,_ Sirius, _please,”_ James whimpers the whole time, not really sure what he means by ‘please’ anymore but knowing so badly that he wants it. His fists shake against the ungiving metal, powerless and outraged, as he imagines what would happen _if_ Sirius were to decide to stop just then and walk away - how _helpless_ and absolutely _painful_ it’ll be. It turns him on perhaps more than it really should. _“_ Oh _shit_ , Pads, you’re so good at this - oh _fuck -_ I’m gonna come _-_ I’m gonna - _“_

James spurts white into Sirius’s lips. It’s almost like Sirius doesn’t notice, not slowing his pace until he’s lapped up every last drop of come and then some. All the time, he’s staring up at James expressionlessly, the whites of his eyes narrow and glowing in the faint moonlight like a fucking cat.

“So hot,” he whispers, when he’s finally let go of James. He then scrambles up to his feet, James’ prick still hanging nakedly between the two of them.

“Uh - Sirius -“ James tries to alert Sirius to the fact, but realizes that Sirius has more urgent plans because he’s started rutting into James again without any ado.

Sirius gasps into James’ neck, words tumbling half way into unintelligible garble, the only things James can pick up being the random ‘James’ and ‘Jamie’ and ‘ _so hot._ ’

Sirius’s hands absently travel upward, trailing James’s own arms until they land on his wrists, over the metal clasps. The single gesture makes James moan all over again, which is curious because he’s _just_ finished coming.

Sirius notices James’ arousal, too, and leans his head back, actually raising an eyebrow and shit. It’s so hot, he’s so hot, Sirius is _so_ hot like this, going all bothered over James and being unable to keep from rutting like mad against him even if he fucking _tried._

“Fuck, yeah, Pads -“

“ _Prongs -“_

“Yeah, oh yeah, I know you’re gonna come for me, anytime now, you’re gonna fucking come for me -“

“ _Ngh,_ _James - oh - OH - FUCK!”_

 

***

 

James sleeps dreamlessly for the first time in months, it seems, and it feels really fucking good.

The next morning, though, James wakes with a tap on his shoulder. He already knows something’s wrong then, before he looks at Sirius or even go so far as open his eyes. He’s not tackled in bed, which happens on most mornings, and he’s not hit by a flying pillow, either - he’s actually, quite literally _tapped_ on the shoulder by Sirius, and if that isn’t a warning sign, well.

“Pads?”

James shifts around and sits up, rubbing at his eyes.

“Morning, Jamie.”

“What’s wrong?”

“How did you know -“

“You fucking woke me up in the nicest way possible, Padfoot, of course something’s wrong. Now hurry up and tell me.”

“I - there’s a letter for you,” Sirius says quietly. He nudges a chin in the direction of the window.

Whistle hoots lowly, beady eyes unblinking on James. A small piece of paper sits beside her on the windowsill.

“I’m sorry I opened it before you -”

James is already making his way toward it. “You open my letters all the time and you’re apologizing now?”

“James -“ Sirius cuts off, as if unsure what to say, as if urging James to read the letter and warning him not to at the same time, but whatever. It’s too late, because James has already picked it up.

 

_To Whom It May Concern_

 

_Mr Fleamont Potter and Mrs Euphemia Potter of 782, Godric’s Hollow have recently been taken into St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, following an attack on their household. Family are encouraged to visit immediately._

 

_Kindest Regards,_

 

_F. O. Roberts_

_Managing Healer_

_St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries_

 

The parchment already jammed into his fist, James rushes out of the room without so much as a word. Kickers the Elf yelps and swerves out of the way as James dashes down the hallway, heart pounding in his ears, ignoring Sirius shouting from far behind. The pub downstairs is empty and he cuts straight through it, reaching the fireplace in a handful of disjointed footsteps and grabbing at the floo powder in the pot, mind already racing through shuffling pictures of injuries and pain and his parents’ pale faces.

_Mom - Dad - hurt -_

 

***

 

“Name?”

“Potter! And get out of my way!”

“ _First name.”_

 _“_ I said get the _fuck—“_

James catches a glimpse, then. Through a tiny window beside the plaque that says _Ward 81_ are two beds with curtains only halfway closed, very familiar figures visible beyond them.

“Mom! Dad!”

James pounds on the glass, too impatient to even get past the elf and go through the door. Euphemia is sitting on the bed looking not-very-obviously-bad, and James bites back the surge of hope that’s about to overtake him. She’s a little late in reacting to James’ fists hitting on the glass, but she does notice after a while. James sucks in a breath as she slowly turns her head, an innocent, amiable yet bewildered smile facing him head-on. The expression doesn’t change after more than a few seconds.

It feels as if a stone drops into the pit of his stomach.

“Mom?!”

“First name?” The elf prompts again.

James stares, horrified, first at his own startled mother, then at the elf to his left, looking up at him expectantly.

“James.”

“Please.” The elf steps aside and the door finally swings open.

James is all of a sudden not sure. His legs shake as he enters, his breathing momentarily halted.

“Mom?” His lips wobble. “D-dad?”

The blank expression on his mother’s face hasn’t changed one bit. As for Fleamont, he’s laid on his back with his hands tucked behind his head, lazily scanning James up and down.

“Oho! Now who has been kind enough as to greet us this morning? You look absolutely dashing, m’boy!”

“D- _dad._ ”

James doesn’t know what he decides to do next, but the next thing he knows, he’s grabbed onto both of his father’s shoulders and shaking them vigorously.

“Oi! Son! What is _this_ for?!”

“ _James_ , dad,” James screams. “It’s _James._ Your son, remember? Your only son. Please, dad, _please,_ you must remember me _._ ”

“Hey, take it easy, son. No need to wet yourself over this; I’m sure we can fix whatever you’re going through.”

James just about collapses on the floor when Euphemia chirps from behind him.

“Did you say ‘James?’”

“ _Mom!_ Mom? Mom, please.”

James scrambles to his mother's side and kneels, holding her head in between his hands to force eye-contact. Her face distorts a bit, which James realizes a belatedly is from the panicked tears springing up in his own eyes.

“It’s J-James. It’s me, Mom. _James_. I’m your _s-son_.”

“My son?” Euphemia blinks slowly, hair in a frizz and face colored healthily, almost like she’s waking up from a good night’s sleep. When her eyes fix on his again, though, they look more glazed than ever.

“I don’t have a son. But James, you certainly have a beautiful name.”

 

***

 

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T KNOW?”

“Please, Mr. Potter. This is unnecessary, although your distress is very much understandable -”

“Fucking— _understandable?_ Understandable, my _arse!_ Go and grab me a better healer! You’re useless, and embarrassing, and -”

“Please, Mr. Potter, calm -“

“Don’t you tell me to calm down! Stop telling me to calm down and go fix my fucking parents!”

“Please, it’s a difficult process, you must understand. The Cruciatus can wipe the memories of even the most powerful wizards if used repeatedly…”

“How many times?”

“P-Pardon me?”

“ _How many times were they cursed?_ ”

“Erm. It depends, Mr. Potter, it dep -“

“I ASKED HOW MANY TIMES!”

“Oh - a - a - few dozen - can’t be exact - I must say -“

James bellows an unintelligible curse and bursts out the door. The crowd is big and buzzing in the lobby as he maneuvers through it, thinking only of returning to the ward as fast as possible when someone tugs on his’ arm.

“And where have _you_ been?” James snarls, perhaps a little too harshly than necessary, because he can not give a fuck at the moment.

“They didn’t let me in - I’m not family. Listen, James -”

“You bloody well _are_ family. You have every fucking right to -”

“Good luck telling that to the elves. But James, how are they?” Sirius asks softly. It should soften James’s mood, only it really does the opposite. Anger and resentment flare inside him with more force than ever, in the middle of an unsuspecting, bustling, faceless mass of hospital patients and visitors and healers. _No one cares,_ he realizes with a pang. _No one cares… not the hospital, not the healers, not even the elves… not even Mom and Dad themselves._

Sirius envelops him in a hurried hug, perhaps having sensed that he was millimeters from breaking apart. James stays still for a while, not having the energy to struggle at the current moment, but then brushes Sirius off in one go.

Sirius calls after him for the second time that morning as James dashes for the elevators, frustrated, flinging his elbow up to brush at his eyes.

 

***

 

“James, _please._ ”

It must be about the dozenth time Sirius has called him through the mirror. James finally pulls it out, not because he wants to listen to whatever Sirius has to say but because he just can’t stand the _sighing_ anymore, the way Sirius says _James_ like he’s already had enough. _He’s_ not the one whose parents went bonkers, and James doesn’t understand where his nerves are coming from, vying for James’s attention like that.

“ _What.”_

James deliberately holds the mirror at a certain angle so it barely reflects the side of his face. He isn’t about to face Sirius in _this_ state - although he isn’t sure exactly how bad he looks like right now.

“There he is. Finally. James, you need to take a break. You haven’t eaten. Come and join us here. You know you can always visit your parents later.”

_Come and join - us?_

James stares. Not so much at Sirius’s face, which looks sincere and worried enough - but at the background, where there’s an oddly colored wall and a few pictures of rural mountains that definitely do _not_ exist in their room at the Leaky Cauldron.

“Are you at Remus’s?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing at Remus’s?”

“Er. Hanging around?”

“Great. Well, you two go on and have fun -“

“James, if you just want to sleep, I can just go back to the Cauldron right now, you know -“

“No, no. No, it’s okay. Go on. Have fun. With Remus. I’m fine here - I’m doing okay.”

“James, show me your face -“

“Muffliato,” James whispers.

For the next half hour or so, James’ mind is surprisingly _not_ occupied with thoughts of his ill parents for the first time that day, thanks to Sirius’s absolute uselessness and rudeness and altogether cluelessness. James is _here,_ sitting very still in his parents’ ward, hoping and praying to Godric and the gods that just _maybe_ they will come to themselves and remember who their son is again, and Sirius is with _Remus_ , probably drinking shots and fooling around and perhaps even putting on Remus’s swing jazz record in the background?

Never mind that the ward elf comes in a while later, head almost invisible beneath a cloud of thick blankets and a full-sized sleeping bag, clutching a pillow in one hand and a tray on the other with food that smells familiarly, unfairly good.

“Why are you still here?” James prompts when he catches the elf watching him after he’s already wolfed down half of the lasagna.

“I - er - I was instructed to… Er - ‘make sure that James Potter finishes his food down to the last drop of delicious sauce.’”

 

***

 

Whistles lands with surprising gentleness on James’ chest that at first he doesn’t notice. It’s only a faint pressure at first, then the owl gives a quiet _hoot_ and he finally brings himself to open his eyes.

“Has Mom and Dad remembered yet?”

He lifts his torso slightly and cranes his neck, wincing as it cracks.

Whistles blinks softly and it makes her look a bit sad. James takes it to mean ‘no.’

Meanwhile, he reaches for her beak between which a letter is clasped - the second in two days. He can only hope it doesn’t contain any more awful news. Thankfully, it’s from the Order and merely outlines where James is expected to be for his next mission.

“Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place? Where the fuck.”

James glances up from the letter to raise his eyebrow at Whistles. Not very surprisingly, Whistles stares back with beady, accusatory eyes. If she was human, she’d be clicking her tongue just about now. It’s not _James’_ fault that he doesn’t know every fucking building and non-building in Britain, but James decides to let her rudeness slide for the time being.

With one regretful glance at his parents’ sleeping faces, he apparates straight from the ward to Grimmauld Place. Not sure if he’s supposed to wait up for someone or if this is a solo thing, he walks down until he’s reached the crack between Number Eleven and Number Thirteen. He looks up and down at it for a couple seconds, noting that the building is four stories high, with muggle occupants present in both sides. He prods at the stone with his wand, not really expecting anything to happen, and is surprised when something definitely _does_ happen. The wall splits apart and the two pieces slide in opposite directions, groaning and shaking a bit until a dark, mahogany door is revealed.

More cautious now, he does a simple _Alohomora_ charm and is surprised again that the lock clicks back, just like that.

And so he steps in.

A noise so loud and ear-splitting hits James back like a curse, nearly sending him straight out of the household. _A scream,_ he notes, alarmed, hands mindlessly pressed over his ears. So someone _is_ here with him. But who? He looks around. Someone from the Order? Or a Death Eater? And why are they screaming? Anyhow, he can’t exactly _think_ what with this fucking terrifying _noise._

“Hey!” he shouts uselessly. The hallway is dark and smells strangely of plants and herbs and… it couldn’t be… Sirius?

“Whoever’s there! Bother showing me around?!”

“ _SCUM!_ ”

“Wait, what - !?“

“ _YOU - FILTHY - PIECE - OF - SCUM! TRAITOR TO OUR BLOOD! YOU DARE DISGRACE MY ELDEST SON! YOU ARE AN EMBARRASSMENT TO THOSE WHO-”_

 _“_ What the fuck - hey, calm down, old woman - _“_ James is about to laugh, really, since the source of the bloody screaming actually turns out to be a _portrait_ of some random madwoman, not any monster like he’d been expecting. But really, she’s very loud, and impossibly seems to get louder by the second.

“YOU DARE BRING DISHONOR TO THE NOBLE, MOST ANCIENT HOUSE OF BLACK!”

The curtains framing the painting flutter dangerously as if physically affected by her sheer passion. If only James _knew_ what this crazy woman was talking about - but he has to admit she looks somewhat beautiful, given her age, and - could it be? She had Sirius’s eyes.

“YOU - PIECE - OF -“

“ _Silencio!_ ”

James looks down at his wand to make sure he hadn’t cast anything. No, no silencing charm. What - who - ?

“Sorry about that.”

Someone brushes past him from behind.

“Wait - Sirius?”

Sirius glances back. His look is odd - complicated, like it’s hiding something ugly underneath. The sudden silence is almost unbearable - rushing into James' ears in a completely different way that the screaming was doing only moments ago.

“Hello,” Sirius says, facing James across a few feet of space.

James gapes. “That wasn’t - she wasn’t -“

“My mother, yeah. ‘Embarrassment,’ honestly,” Sirius scoffs. “Talk about herself.” He looks at James uncertainly. “Erm. I’m. Sorry if it kind of, you know, caught you off guard or something.”

“Fuck, no.” It _did_ catch James off guard, of course. “I just can’t believe she - you -“

“Yeah, neither can I. Shall we, then?”

Sirius doesn’t stop acting oddly for the rest of the day. He’s all silent, but not the brooding-silent, more like hatred-simmering-in-the-form-of-silence-silent, like he’s hating every moment here, hating every fucking room in the house, every speck of dust resting atop abandoned volumes on the shelves.

“Erm, Sirius?”

“Hmm?”

Sirius’s voice is distant and rather small even as he’s standing only a few feet away. His wand keeps blindly sweeping at the grimy windowsill, expression not betraying a single particle of emotion.

“Erm, Sirius,” James says again, peering into Sirius’s face for good measure.

“James?”

“Um.”

Now that he’s started a conversation, James is not at all sure what to say. Odd, really, since he never _not_ knows what to talk about with Sirius.

The sky. Yes, the blue sky.

“The sky’s pretty today, isn’t it?”

Sirius turns slowly to look at him, mildly bemused.

“Are you talking about the _weather?_ ”

 

***

 

“Er, no, I’m going back,” is what James says when Sirius sticks out an arm to him at the end of the day.

Sirius raises a quizzical eyebrow.

“To the hospital,” James clarifies.

“ _No._ ”

Sirius’s tone is firm in that single syllable, and for a moment James is shocked into silence for a minute. It’s the first sign of any emotion he’s seen on his face in the entire day.

“Er - no?”

“No,” Sirius repeats before forcefully grabbing James’ elbow.

“How long did you sleep last night?” Sirius says back at the Leaky Cauldron, guiding James rather bluntly toward the bed.

“Erm -“

“A couple hours at most, I’d say. Those circles under your eyes - tell-tale signs,” Sirius clicks his tongue. “Look, James -“

Sirius sits down on the bed, patting James on the shoulder until James give in and lies down on his back. Sirius’s hand cups James’ jaw. It’s a little - _tender -_ than usual, and it feels rather soothing, the way it brushes against James’ long-neglected stubble.

“I know it’s tough, going through what you’re going through. And I know you want to be with them every moment of the day, and you _can,_ every day from now on until they recover. I’m not going to stop you. But you can’t -“ Sirius sighs. “You can’t compromise yourself for it, James. You’ve still got to get the rest you need, and eat the food you need. You’ve got to take care of yourself - or at least let _me_ take care of you - your parents would want you to do that.”

James looks down, deciding it’s easier to hide from Sirius this way.

“Go to sleep.” Sirius leans in and whispers against his cheek. “You can shower in the morning, yeah? And if you’re hungry at any point, just let me know.”

One subtle kiss to the corner of his eye, and James is out like a light.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. So, um. Yeah.  
> I really can't punch myself over this enough but I'm so sorry how this fic is taking me ages, and how the updates are so fucking unpredictable. The thing is, it's only going to get worse from here because yes, I actually have a life outside of Prongsfoot fic and sometimes, I need to make myself time to actually LIVE it, you know? And the time to do this is approaching fast. So I am entirely unsure of when the next update will be.  
> I'm just putting it out there, because I just don't want to leave y'all in the dark. I may update as soon as next week or not update until Christmas or something. The only thing certain for now is that I'm not finished with this fic, and it will never be left unfinished.
> 
> Cheers to y'all, and by the way your comments always light me up!


	12. Shock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING   
> A little bit of a non-con scene here. It's not too violent, but if it bothers you, make sure you skip the first section.

12.

 

 

 

James doesn’t know for how many hours he’s been sitting here. Here, on a bar stool, tired and angry and alone.

If you asked him why he’s not at St. Mungo’s, looking after his parents, he’d tell you he’s tired, that he’ll get to that later, maybe when the sun comes up. But the truth is that he’s scared, terrified of the fact that his parents no longer know who he is, stomach-churningly anxious that perhaps - a very small chance, he tells himself, but _perhaps -_ they just may never remember who he is. He may never see his father’s booming smile directed at him again, he may never see his mother’s pissed-off face at one of his pranks-gone-wrong. The thought is so unrealistic James would _think_ it’ll be easy to ignore, but the fact that even after he’s gone through six shots of Odgen’s the prospect still remains in his mind begs to differ.

“Hey, chap, we’re closing.” The bartender almost doesn’t look human because of his gray beard covering half his face. James wouldn’t recognize him for shit, even if he was a first-class Death Eater. _It wouldn’t matter,_ James muses. _If I got killed in cold blood at this moment in this godforsaken bar, it wouldn’t really matter, would it? I’d no longer feel like shit._ He watches as the “open” sign flips itself around to “closed.” _I’d no longer be a burden on Sirius._

“Yeah,” James stands up from his stool, swaying in the process. “I’m leaving now.”

“Take care,” the man calls after him hurriedly, like even _he_ with his face half-covered in beard can tell that James can’t take care of himself.

This pisses him off even more, and now that he’s out in the dark again with no other human being to be seen, it’s all he can do not to scream out loud and kick a wall.

Once back in their room in the Cauldron, he slips in as quietly as his intoxication will allow, but in vain. In the dark, Sirius sits atop the bed, his figure a mere blotch of shadow against the headboards. His knees are hugged close against the cold. 

James starts. “Why are you—“

“I thought I told you to wake me.”

“I… What?”

“I told you to wake me if you needed anything. Were you hungry? Did you want food?”

“Um. Not really.“

“Did you need to be alone?”

Sirius’s voice sounds scratchy, exhausted. James imagines red eyes and dark circles. “Were you getting sick of me?”

“It’s not like that.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not—”

James rushes in and lands roughly on the bed. In a single breath, he grabs Sirius’s head and kisses him.

Sirius doesn’t move, doesn’t so much as make a noise. His lips are weirdly cold against James’, and James laves them thoroughly with his tongue, biting them hard to prove a point. When he runs out of breath, he pulls back, only to dive back in at the next moment when Sirius says, quietly, “what are you doing?”

“Fuck,” James seethes, sinking his teeth into Sirius’s raw lower lip. “I need—to—“ His forehead knocks against Sirius’s chin, his teeth finding a fresh bit of skin on his neck to molest. When Sirius still doesn’t tilt his head to give him more access, his hair is pulled back hard by angry fingers. His head snaps back easily, then, his next words directed more or less toward the ceiling.

“You need to what?”

A mere whisper—curious with a dash of alarm—a mere, annoying undercurrent beneath the roar in

James’s ears. Lust and desire swirl loud in his stomach, his arms trailing down and around to yank at the elastic of Sirius’s boxers…

“James, wait…”

James’s groin thrusts hard into Sirius’s torso; their sudden movement straightforward in its message. Sirius obliges, so deadly silent apart from a soft, involuntary grunt. He lies sprawled across the bed under James’s full weight, for some reason refusing to budge at all, looking so pliant and open for him, just so _ready…_

“Mm, fuck,” James groans, rolling his hips mindlessly. “ _Fuck_ …” His eyelids close shut.

Wave after wave of delicious pleasure consume him, pushed by currents of intoxicated desire. Blood screams and coils in his abdomen and lust infiltrates his brain, sharpening the feel of Sirius’s hip bones pressing into his palms, the rush of stale bedroom air gasping into his lungs…

It only takes a handful of thrusts to tip him over the edge, his entire body singing with a liveliness and contentment it hasn’t felt in many days. It lasts for maybe a few shaky breaths, until he opens his eyes, until he registers the sight laid below him.

Sirius looks at him with half-lidded eyes, an odd tilt to his head and lips pressed too thin for them to indicate anything close to arousal. James, having savored his own orgasm, reaches down to stroke him and finds him completely flaccid.

“Did you come?”

Sirius’s response is a nonverbal, quick shake of the head, before he reaches up to pat James on the shoulder. It takes several pats for James to realize that, yes, Sirius wants him to move.

Completely dumbfounded, his mind-blowing orgasm just seconds ago already forgotten, he frees Sirius of his weight. Sirius sits up calmly and starts to smooth down the wrinkles in his top, as if he’s just coming in from windy weather, about to take off his boots.

“Sirius, I -“

“It’s alright.”

“I didn’t -“

“I said it’s alright, didn’t I?”

Sirius’s croaky, spent voice plunges James into a cold silence. Doubt and insecurity cloud over his sight; he sees nothing but Sirius laid down before him, patient and immobile while James ruts hard into him, entirely unaroused and confused and in pain…

“James, wait -“

 

***

 

_James, wait…_

All of it dawns on him steadily, like a cold front creeping toward and through him- how Sirius’s mouth had felt so unusually dry and unmoving against James’s, yet how James had insisted, in fact _forced_ them into reciprocation before they could even properly mutter out, “James, wait” - how utterly numb and... _dead…_ Sirius’s cock had felt in his hand afterward, in his hasty, lust-clouded assertion that Sirius was as equally aroused as he was - because Sirius _always_ was, always had been, always unquestionably willing to offer James everything he had and then some.

And yet tonight, after all these years, he had said, _wait._

 

***

 

“I did a horrible thing.”

He sits by his mother’s bed, a little farther than usual, his gaze unwavering from his lap where his hands lie palms-up.

“He’ll never forgive me.”

“Whoever you’re talking about, dear, and whatever you’ve done, I’m sure he will forgive you if you apologize sincerely enough.”

“No - this time - I really fucked up.” There’s a certain comfort in talking about himself in front of parents who don’t remember you, James thinks to himself. The embarrassment is minimal and easy to ignore under so much shame.

“He clearly means so much to you.”

 _Means so much to him_ doesn’t even cover it. It’s only a matter of time now before Sirius ends everything, just says it - _I’m done with you -_ without even a backward glance. It would shatter him. It would finish him in a way Death Eaters never could.

“Oh, honey, don’t cry - “

“You don’t c-call me _honey,_ mom.”

“Pardon me?”

“You never called me _honey -_ it was _never_ ‘honey’ _-_ it was Jamie, or it was sweetie, or sweetheart -“

“Okay then, Jamie…”

Even the way she says _Jamie_ is weird, like a stranger trying his name out for the first time, and yet _she’s_ the one who named him in the first place. The startled confusion etched in those innocent lines on her face make her look younger than she actually is. Perhaps having your memory taken does have some perks after all.

“Jamie, please tell me why you’re crying…”

“Jamie.”

James’s head snaps up at the second voice, so awfully familiar and so starkly opposite to his mother’s _honey don’t cry_ that his heart skips a couple of beats, because _no,_ there’s no way in hell that he’s _still_ talking to him, not after all of what happened…

_He’s going to break up with me._

The sudden conviction plunges him into an abyss of fear and self-hatred, an impact of a thousand dementors. He can’t even bring himself to pull his mirror out, which makes him despise himself even more for it. The mirrors had been their own ingenious invention. It had taken them many weeks to perfect and once even landed Sirius in the hospital wing with a nasty gash on his arm. Now he was using it to break it off with James. He can already picture where the entire conversation is headed, can already see himself begging, sobbing, exposing his ugliest self to his parents under the unrelenting white lights of a useless hospital ward.

_Please don’t do it…_

“James, please. I just want to talk to you.”

Sirius’s voice travels softly to his ears, yet managing to carry so much threat. He sounds _this_ close to blurting out loud, _I just want to end this,_ and James reckons the only reason why he doesn’t just _end_ it without even making eye-contact through their mirrors is because he can hear James sobbing on the other end. James could never cry in silence. He had always been so quick to push his pain onto Sirius.

 

***

 

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

Mungo’s Tearoom on the fifth floor is as busy as always, brimming with absentminded chatter and unspoken condolences, and James can easily assume those words are directed to someone else. As he makes eye-contact with the barista, though, he realizes he’s the one being addressed.

“What?”

“I — I’m sorry for your loss.” The girl says it more like a question this time, a puzzled, embarrassed squint to her eyes. Yes, James must look terrible right now.

“I haven’t lost anyone.”

“Oh -“ She averts her gaze to the counter, where she quickly starts counting sickles. “Erm. Excuse me, then, sir.” She hands him his drink hastily. Steaming black coffee trembles in the paper cup.

“I might as well have,” James blurts.

“Er - pardon me?”

“This person - he’s very close to me… at least, well, he used to be. I fucked up big time. He’s sick of me now. I know it.” He has no idea why he’s telling her this. Perhaps he just needs some outlet that isn’t his poor mother.

The barista - poor thing. Her eyes dart sideways, no doubt looking for a rescue of some sort. “Oh — er —“

“In fact, he may already hate me. I can’t blame him, either. I did a horrible thing to him that he didn’t deserve and he had to deal with me in this - _horrible_ way - and - “ he chokes slightly, registers coffee splashing around dangerously. “And I - I bet he can’t stomach me anymore.“

“Of course I can’t stomach you.”

James gasps. Something heavy drops into the pit of his stomach and hot liquid splashes on a knuckle.

“What -?!“ He turns around very slowly, his mind reeling in dread.

Sirius, complete with his expensive robes and smooth black hair, actually fucking _smiles._

“What are you talking about, Jamie? I’ve never been able to stomach you.” His tone is amused and teasing and everything that the situation does not warrant. His eyes glisten warmly, wrinkling at the corners as if he’s actually glad - _happy -_ to find James.

“I don’t - ”

James is silenced dumb by just the sight of Sirius approaching him, that small smile still curving those lips - not that he could have said anything substantial anyway. Sirius takes the coffee from his hand wordlessly, bringing it to his lips.

“Would you like something to drink, sir?” The barista girl squeals belatedly, her tone an octave higher than when James heard it last.

Sirius eyes her curiously as he takes a sip. “That’s alright, thank you.” He flashes her a wink.

James stares at him in awe, disbelieving that he can act as if absolutely nothing has happened between them. Everything is as before: Sirius taking from James what isn’t his, Sirius flirting with random people to make him jealous. Sirius smiling. Sirius brushing a finger against James’s right hand, where a few drips of coffee had previously singed his skin.

 

***

 

As soon as they step over the threshold to the Blacks’ household, Sirius immediately enchants Walburga Black’s portrait. The curtain snaps shut across it, silencing her before she can scream out an entire word.

But no one else has arrived yet. The silence is an oppressive one.

“Do you hate me?” James blurts, the anxiety having already reached a maximum. His voice trembles through the long hallway.

“Yeah, I hate you and I only went to St. Mungo’s to get shitty coffee,” Sirius says smoothly, swirling the cup around and eyeing the stuff inside. “This tastes of hippogriff dung,” he adds.

“Do you hate me?” James says again.

Sirius looks at him this time, properly. He must see something on James’s expression then, because his own softens immediately. He determinedly sets the coffee down on a piece of furniture.

“Listen, James.” He turns to face him, wrapping both arms around his waist and tugging him closer until their chests are touching. James stares straight ahead at the hideous green wallpaper behind Sirius, bracing himself for what comes next.

“I don’t hate you.”

James doesn’t believe him. “I don’t - I d-don’t believe you.”

“I love you, James. Do you not believe that either?”

“Why do you act like nothing’s happened?”

“Because nothing _has,_ James, it’s all in your head. You didn’t hurt me or anything.”

_James, wait -_

“But you didn’t want it.”

“Neither did you.”

“I don’t know… I felt like…”

_Flashes of intoxicating pleasure, the faint taste of blood rolling over his teeth -_

“You were in shock. You were just hurting. You dealt with it in the only way you could think of.”

“But I u-used you, Sirius.”

“Hey - you didn’t _use_ me - why would you think I’d let _anyone_ use me like that, really, Prongs? You know me - you know I let you do it. I could have stopped you if I wanted.”

“You should have stopped me. I - I shouldn’t have done it.”

“You needed to. I get it. It’s alright.”

“You - you don’t hate me?”

“ _Jamie_ , we went over this already,” Sirius’s hands slide up to hold both sides of James’s head. James is forced to meet his eyes. “I’m in love with you, remember?” Sirius whispers, combing James’s fringe away. He closes in, overwhelming him with the distinct _Sirius_ smell he’s missed so much, gaze fluttering to his lips -

“Stunning place you used to live here, Sirius,” a sudden voice booms from not so far away.

James jumps.

“Remus!”

Sirius huffs, begrudgingly letting go of James. “We were having a moment here, Moony.” He says loudly, as James trots over to hug Remus. “Was it hard to tell?”

“Believe me, I’ve had enough of your little ‘moments’ in school to last me a lifetime.”

As Sirius and Remus move in for a full embrace, James feels the corners of his mouth stretching to a giddy grin.

_He still loves me. He’s not disgusted by me._

A familiar red-haired figure peers from around Remus. James beams, going to hug her, too.

_He loves me._

 

***

 

“Thank you all for gathering here today. Hogwarts Castle has been deemed no longer safe, and James and Sirius have kindly cleared out this space for us.” Dumbledore twinkles his eyes at them. “I must say, it is quite a comfort here.”

Sirius snorts audibly.

As Dumbledore starts his speech of the usual length, it reduces itself into a background drone. James looks around cautiously, registering and interpreting every face surrounding the table. Who is here? Who is missing?

“…several attacks since our last meeting…”

Lily, Remus, Marlene, Frank, Alice. All of his friends are here, that’s for sure. Even though he knows he’d be notified if somebody had been killed, or had gone missing, actually seeing all the familiar faces in real life is a great comfort. The only emptiness he feels is because of Peter, which he tries to ignore as much as he can. But then, Dumbledore ends up mentioning him.

“Peter Pettigrew, a previous spy for Lord Voldemort, has been caught and is now sentenced to two months in Azkaban.”

James looks up, blood draining from his face.

Sirius sucks in a breath beside him.

Remus rubs his palms over his face.

James thinks Dumbledore sounds a little sad for the slightest sliver of a second, although he’s already moved on to the next bit of depressing news before he can be sure.

 

***

 

“He deserves it,” says Sirius adamantly.

“He doesn’t,” says James. “No one does.”

“James, you almost _died_ because of him.”

James has nothing to say to that. Instead, he downs his shot of firewhiskey in one go.

“So, you and Evans, huh?” Sirius says.

James looks up, confused, and realizes that Sirius is addressing Remus.

Remus stares back at him. “How in the world did you know?”

“Read your mind,” Sirius says nonchalantly. “You were thinking very intensely about her; I could smell it from a mile away.”

“Next time, you’ll learn something called respecting other people’s privacy.”

“What are you guys on about?” James says.

Remus looks around anxiously. They’re in the Three Broomsticks; a handful of witches and wizards are scattered nearby, but none are within easy earshot.

“Lily and I are together.” Remus says matter-of-factly, but James knows him well enough to detect the slight rosy tints to his cheeks. He clears his throat. “It’s rather hard being intimate with someone these days… might risk something beyond yourself…” Remus glances at them quickly. ”As I’m sure you both already know…”

They do. James used to think he would simply get used to it, but it feels as though it only gets harder. Acting around everyone as though Sirius does not mean the slightest to him, just another guy from school; Sirius doing the equivalent to James. It hurts, so much so that sometimes James can feel it physically, a pain spiking somewhere deep in his chest.

And so much worrying. Merlin, the worry. Lying wide awake in bed at night, even as ninety-nine percent of your body cells shriek at you to go to sleep, because somewhere in your gut is agrowling creature of fear, of a million what-ifs. Your mind whirring to replay the last time you saw them, to remind yourself that, yes, you had told them to be careful, had checked every precaution off the hypothetical list alongside them, had told them that you love them. Twisting an unresponsive shard of mirror around in your palm, realizing how hard you’ve been gripping it only after it cuts into your flesh.

A hand catches the small of his back.

 

***

 

They find themselves that night in a subpar Muggle motel, tucked into the outskirts of London. Dumbledore had advised them to move around once in a while; had reminded them that perhaps the only Wizard inn in the whole of London may not be their safest option.

“Not bad,” James says, throwing his rucksack down on the floor.

It’s a rather spacey room; at least twice as big as theirs back at the Leaky Cauldron. It’s nicely kept, too, the bedsheets crisp and cool to the touch as James flops down and immediately closes his eyes.

“Merlin’s balls, I hate that place,” Sirius announces suddenly.

“What place?”

“That bloody house.”

The Blacks’ House.

James squints an eye open. Neither of them had bothered to turn on the lights, and Sirius’s expression is shrouded in shadow.

“Yeah… I’m… I wish Dumbledore could have picked somewhere else,” James says.

Wordlessly, Sirius rummages around in his bag, pulling out what looks to be a bunch of clothes. He shrugs off his blazer in the process.

Something catches James’s eye, then. It could be some sort of… weird pattern on Sirius’s shirt, except he’s pretty sure Sirius was wearing a plain white button-up beneath the blazer today. Across the back, a solid color spans vertically like a thick brushstroke.

James frowns, having opened both his eyes by now.

“Lumos.”

It looks awfully like blood - before he can look closer, though, Sirius has swiveled around.

“What’s this, Sirius?”

A strange look clouds Sirius’s face.

“What’s what?”

“That thing on your back! Is it… did you get hurt?”

Sirius shakes his head dismissively, averting his gaze from James and the glaring wandlight. “Oh, that.” He begins to don his blazer back on. “S’ nothing.”

James sticks out a stubborn hand, catching Sirius’s wrist before he can hide the wound again.

“You got hurt and you didn’t tell me! Who did it!”

“No one.”

Sirius sounds cold. James knows that tone. It’s the tone he uses when he wants to hide something; when he doesn’t wish to discuss a certain topic.

James won’t have it. He reaches for the light switch to properly turn on the lights, to get a proper look at Sirius.

“Oh, I get huge gashes like that all the time, too, they just happen randomly, don’t they?”

“I meant it. It wasn’t anyone,” says Sirius. “It was… well, a charm of sorts.”

“A _charm,”_ James echos incredulously.

“Fine, a curse, if you will.”

“What _curse?_ ”

_Merlin’s balls, I hate that place._

A sudden realization.

_That bloody house._

Sirius raises his eyebrows. He knows he doesn’t have to explain any further.

“Sirius!”

Sirius is already leaving for the bathroom, hitching his pajamas carelessly over his shoulder.

“ _Sirius!_ ”

James quickly follows him. “Hey, hey -” He grabs his shoulder.

Ignoring Sirius’s sarcastic protests, he turns Sirius around, unbuttoning his shirt and peeling it off in an angry deftness.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He says as neutrally as he can, stepping around to his back to heal the wound.

“Exactly because of this.”

“What? What’s _this?”_

“You react so strongly.”

“I react _strongly?”_ James says disbelievingly. Angry sparks momentarily fly off the end of his wand, and he has to steady it before he can get it back to the wound. “I react strongly. Right. So - what, Padfoot, am I supposed to act like this is - this is - _normal?”_

“It _is_ normal, Prongs. This is what you don’t understand.” Mid-healing, Sirius turns back around to face him. His face is set; stern. “ _This is normal for me._ This has been my normal ever since I was born.”

Constant screaming. Unforgivables. Curses that make you bleed, long after those who cast them have perished. _My normal._

“You have a nice family, James. You’ve got a nice mom and dad. You can’t possibly understand. You want to be dramatic every time I get hurt, fine. Well, let’s say I just want to spare you the drama.”

 _No one would even guess_ , James thinks, surveying the smooth, porcelain-pale contours of Sirius’s face through ever-trembling tears. _No one could ever guess from this beautiful, handsome, sharp, clever face. The scarred memories it carries, the burden of all of it._

“If you don’t mind, I’m hopping in the shower.”

“I h-haven’t finished,” James says quickly, willing his wand arm to steady once more.

“ _James,_ ” Sirius says firmly, landing a heavy hand on his forehead. “You’ve had a long day. Go get some rest, yeah?” His tone has suddenly gone soft.

James stares at his wand tip, frustrated as it maintains its marginal shaking.

“ _Come on,_ James.” Sirius ruffles his hair, trying to get his attention. “For me.”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone. Thanks so much for keeping up!  
> I know it's been so long since my last update. I hope y'all don't hate me.  
> Just a heads-up; this fic is nearing its end (maybe a couple more chapters) but I'm having so much fun writing it! Keep commenting, and watch out for the next updates!


	13. Apathy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Si… I read what happened… I’m -“  
> “Sorry, I know. Doesn’t change much, does it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year, folks!!  
> And happy, happy reading :)

13.

 

 

James almost panics as soon as he realizes Sirius is not in bed with him the next morning. That is, he becomes nervous to the extent that he dashes for the bathroom, only to mistake the door to the hallway as the one to the bathroom. Sparing no heed to the alarmed housekeeping lady, he slams the wrong door shut and makes for the actual bathroom.

There, he blinks at Sirius’s reflection on the mirror and takes the first breath of the day. Failing to act nonchalant, he crashes into him and clutches onto his neck.

“Whoa, Jamie,” Sirius exclaims, automatically rubbing his palms over James’s back. “Nightmare?”

Come to think of it, it could have been a nightmare. Otherwise, why would it jump him so much only from not seeing Sirius is bed with him, after so many years of living with Sirius and his early-rising tendencies? Otherwise, when had James turned into such a squeaky little girl?

James hums into the fabric on Sirius’s shoulder, neither in assent nor in denial.

“It’s alright now, James.” A script so overused James can even mouth along it. “I’m here.”

“Si…”

“Yeah, that’s me.” James’s heart rate slows considerably. “I’ve got you.”

They breath in a shared silence for a few seconds, and James is just about to ask what his mission for the day is, when Sirius says suddenly, “Wanna see something cool?”

James can smell a dare from a mile away.

“Not really.”

“Oh, come on, Prongs. I have it here right now.” Sirius does a little nudge with his chin, prompting James’s head to turn toward the sink. There on the countertop, a small, white, foreign-looking gadget lies innocently.

“Please tell me you weren’t stupid enough to use it.”

“Of course I used it, James, how could you think any less of me?”  
James groans. “Well, what is it _for?_ ”

“It’s a razor.”

Just the name of it sounds ominous to James’s ears.

“Oh, I definitely know what that is - “ James cuts off. Sirius holds the gadget to his jaw as he motions sliding it across the skin.

Ominous, indeed. James’s eyes go round. “Sirius, how _could_ you - I bet it has, like, fucking _teeth_ on - “

“It doesn’t hurt.” Sirius grins. His fingers have already landed on James’s stubble, scratching at it experimentally.

“ _No.”_ James swerves away. _“_ Absolutely not. I think I prefer magic, I really do.”

Sirius grins wider. “It’s a dare.”

James groans again.

Once Sirius has announced a dare, regardless of how dumb or embarrassing or life-threatening, it’s done. This is the only reason why James shuts up, then, begrudgingly tilting his chin toward Sirius so he has the best possible access and he couldn’t _possibly_ slip up -

Shaving cream foams on his face out of nowhere and suddenly a cool, smooth texture brushes against the side of his jaw. It slides forward slowly, little more than a prickle of fresh air. James blinks.

“Painless, am I right?”

“Bloody muggles,” James says, grumpily.

Sirius chuckles, falling silent as his concentration settles onto James’s chin. James sucks in a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, his attention allowed to wander now that he’s realized he can stop worrying about the muggle shaving spell. His gaze lands on the mirror before him. He’s grown quite some stubble since the last time he shaved - how long could it have been since his parents had landed in the hospital, rendering him useless save for crying and praying and depriving himself of sleep?

In the reflection, Sirius’s eyes peer into the underside of his chin, his fingertips pressing softly to hold him in place. Strands of his fringe fall down to tickle the tip of James’s ear, his slow, focused breaths breezing over newly shaved skin.

 _You’ve got to take care of yourself - or at least let_ me _take care of you - your parents would want you to do that._

It had been Sirius who had said those words while caressing him after a long day, calming him down enough to coerce him into bed when all James could see was the image of his parents’ empty eyes, glazed over with forgotten pasts. It had been Sirius who had sent home-cooked food into the ward, making him realize how long it had been since he last ate, blackmailing the ward-elf to make sure he finished his food. And it’s Sirius, now, who’s noticed him growing a beard unintentionally and taken it into his own hands to deal with it, disguising the whole thing as a dare.

“All done,” Sirius proudly announces. He dabs a towel across James’s chin, catching his tongue between his teeth when he reaches the tender part between the nose and the lips.

The razor-thing drops on the countertop with a short clatter _._ James’s hair ruffles under Sirius’s hand.

James turns to look at him, meaning to convey what _thank you_ couldn’t even come close to conveying. His hands reach up, hesitantly, to land on Sirius’s chest.

Sirius looks back at him. A sweet smile blooms on his face, a signature warmth washing over his gaze.

James’s chest swells up in wonder. It makes him close the gap between them, one that didn’t exist much in the first place, and he seals it off with a kiss.

“Mm.”

“Si…” James breathes into his open mouth. He tumbles back in for more, nudging and pushing at Sirius’s chest until he’s got him fully crowded against the wall.

James’s hands decide to slide beneath his shirt, then, and Sirius’s low hum cuts off with a quiet moan. The sound shivers through James’s lips and onto his tongue, traveling down his throat and making him gulp thickly.

“Si… I…”

“Yeah.”

It’s hopeless, really, how James is turned on by the slightest, dumbest of things Sirius has been enlightened with the idea to pull off. By letting him shave his face. With a muggle tool.

_How are you so good to me?_

James’s fingers tug at the hem of Sirius’s shirt, starting to peel it off: It’s clumsy and awkward, what with Sirius’s attempt to help counteracting the whole ordeal. Their kiss halts in the middle of twisting the fabric out of the way and it scorches the want inside James with doubled force, his hands slamming down on the hard tiles to trap Sirius’s head in. The shirt finally out of the way, his tongue shoves back into Sirius’s mouth, which Sirius immediately takes in like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

_How do you handle me?_

James runs one hand up Sirius’s torso and the other down and beneath his boxers. Sirius bucks into him absentmindedly, cupping James’s arse in an assertive fierceness and muffling his rapid breathing against James’s lips. James answers, his fingers trailing further down until he’s reached the base of Sirius’s cock, where he begins to stroke.

“Yeah, Jamie, that’s it…” His Adam’s apple bobbing elegantly, his voice raspy with need. His eyelids flutter like butterflies.

_How are you so perfect?_

“Faster, come on…”

James uses his spare hand to slide Sirius’s boxers off. It doesn’t go quite as intended, however, and he has to look down at it to make it work. He gets it down quickly, marveling at the now exposed sight of Sirius’s cock pulsing hotly in James’s palm.

James groans, and he can’t help it anymore; he brings his other hand to squeeze his own crotch himself. He’s just about to shut his eyes, to lose himself in the overwhelming sounds and sensations, when he sees them.

Two, dark, purple blotches bloom unapologetically over pale hipbones, highlighting the sharp bones in a wicked shade.

“What the -“

Was this another one of the Blacks’ dirty little tricks in the household? Had he missed a couple of bruises last night, when he had been occupied with the wide gash on Sirius’s back?

“James - come on - why’d you stop -?!”

James covers the bruises with his hands, experimentally. The hipbones press into his palms neatly, the angles slotting into them almost _too_ perfectly…

“ _James_ , what are you - “

_Blood screams and coils in his abdomen and lust infiltrates his brain, sharpening the feel of Sirius’s hip bones pressing into his palms, the rush of stale bedroom air gasping into his lungs…_

His mouth goes dry.

“Shit,” he says suddenly. His erection twitches disappointedly in his pants.

Sirius looks at him in frustration. “What? Did you just find out my dick is bigger than yours?”

“Shitshitshit.”

Sirius finally thinks to look down, catching one of James’s wrist and peering underneath. Something dawns on his face.

“Oh - hey -“

James makes for the door; Sirius catches him by the upper-arm.

“I’ve still got a boner, here!” His attempt at humor is met with an angry shake of the head.

“I’m going to heal that.”

Another painful tug on his arm.

“ _No._ ”

He’s steered back by force, stumbling face-to-face with Sirius once more. Sirius’s eyes glisten in a fierce assuredness.

“ _No,_ James. I’ve already told you - it didn’t hurt me. It _doesn’t_ hurt me.”

“I - did that - to you -“ James gasps, horrified.

“It wasn’t you. I _promise_ to you, it wasn’t. You were drunk, you were in shock, you weren’t yourself. I’ve told you this and I’ll tell you this as many times as you need -”

 _How could I deserve you?_ The words arrange themselves in James’s mind before he can so much as stick a hand in front of them. He can almost see them physically, zooming in a spiteful speed, as they tumble out and straight into Sirius’s blinking eyes.

James holds his breath.

“James - that’s - that’s bullshit…”

Sirius caught it. He fucking caught it. Bloody, _bloody_ mind-reading.

James scrambles away easily this time; Sirius is too shocked to even call after him.

 

***

 

“You can not go in, sir.” The ward-elf stops him right in front of Ward 81.

“ _What do you mean?_ ” James spins around at him, his heart suddenly making itself known. “Did - did something happen to them - ?”

“A healer is inside currently. You must wait here for a while, sir.”

 _A healer._ In the many hours James has spent within the ward, not once did a healer ever show up. _The Cruciatus can only be healed with time,_ the directing healer had told him once by means of placation, when James had been close to punching him in the nose. _It is out of our hands._

If his parents couldn’t be treated by healers, what’s a healer doing in there _now_? James doesn’t want to think any further. He really, really doesn’t.

“What’s going _on?_ ” He demands, more assertively.

The elf shuffles his feet. “It is not my place to tell… It is cold out in the hallway, sir, there is a tearoom upstairs…“

James can already feel all hope draining through the pit of his stomach. It is cold, yes, but he is drenched in sweat, and his palms are clammy when he brings them up to sink through his hair.

The door to Ward 81 clicks open without warning. The healer who steps out looks disheveled and confused, a foot almost mis-stepping on its own heel.

James scrambles onto his feet.

“What’s going on!”

The healer notices James’s presence with a start. “Oh! Of course - of course, sir. Y-you must be their son. You look very alike, yes.”

James has done enough waiting. Without much care, he bumps past her and the elf and scrambles through the doorway, bracing himself for the absolute worst -

“ _James, sweetheart!_ ”

“ _My boy!_ ”

“Oh my god,” James lets out a breath, shaking in barely contained disbelief. “Do you. You remember me?”

“James, sweetie, we’re _so_ sorry. The healer just told us what happened; she couldn’t quite figure out why we were cured!” Mrs. Potter frowns then, her shoulders slumping a little. “She didn’t really believe we’d make it. Oh, dear, I’m so sorry, it must have been such a _shock_ to you.”

James merely stands there, gaping at the two familiar faces beaming at him. It is his father that initiates the hug, chuckling softly and ruffling his hair. “Son, you have no idea how much I missed you.”

 

 

 

All of this is surreal - James feels a hot air balloon blowing up in his chest, seconds from floating his entire body away. It is almost as if nothing has happened, like he has gone back in time when things were simple and peaceful and his parents were never attacked in the first place. With this knowledge of their successful treatment settled securely in his heart, it seems to him as though everything going on outside the ward and demanding his attention is happening at half-speed, that they can surely wait a little.

“Sirius _._ You won’t _believe_ this.” A laugh bubbles up even as he’s finishing the sentence.

Sirius, however, is not interested.

“ _Sirius!”_ James brings the mirror to his mouth, shouting into it.

“Jesus fucking Christ _,_ not _now_.”

James shuts up. What could possibly be more important than James’s parents having been cured? What could make Sirius sound like _that,_ so unusually fierce… like he’s _angry?_

“Is something the matter?” Mrs. Potter says. “Is Sirius alright? Oh, I wish I could see him - I do miss him very much. How is he doing lately?”

“Sirius!” Mr. Potter booms from behind her. “Tell him to visit us!”

James fidgets with the mirror for a while before decisively storing it back in his pocket.

“Er. He’s doing alright. I will, dad. I - I’ve got to go now, actually.” He stands up, not so gracefully.

“Really? So soon?”

“I just - remembered something. I’ll see you soon, Mom, Dad -“

 

***

 

“Sirius?”

The jet black, well-tamed hair peeking out from behind the bed is easily confused. No one can blame James, then, when Regulus Black cranes his neck to stare back at him. The day is particularly full of surprises.

“I’m his brother,” Regulus says, neutrally.

“Wha - fuck - I _know_ who you are, Regulus -“ James stutters. “What are you _doing_ here?”

“Sirius told me to come here.” Regulus shrugs. Impossibly, he looks bored already, turning back to contemplate the view out the window as if James had inconveniently interrupted him in the middle of his meditation or something.

James won’t have it. “And _why_ did Sirius tell you to come here?”

“I don’t _know,_ alright? Look, do you _ever_ know what Sirius is thinking about? No. Well, I don’t, either.” Regulus talks at the window. There is a distinct similarity, James feels, between the brothers. The brutal sarcasm. The averted eyes and turned back when they wish to keep something hidden. The straightforward rudeness they do not hesitate to give off when the situation is deemed less than appealing.

James’s gaze lands on the bed, where the _Daily Prophet_ is carelessly thrown over the duvet, turned to a random page. It is the precise rareness of Sirius to be untidy like this that prompts James to get closer.

He skims the page, which is full of small, nearly identical headlines. Soon enough, though - he spots a familiar name standing out of the hubbub.

 

_Three Dead in Attack, Teddington_

_Two muggles and one wizard have been killed in a Death Eater attack in Teddington Village, Middlesex. They were found in the same household and appear to have been a mixed-blood family. The wizard, Alphard Black, son of Pollux Black and Irma Crabbe, had been a member of none other than the Black Family, one of the most esteemed pure-blood families as of date._

_The funeral service scheduled to take place on Sunday, 17th of January, from 10AM in Teddington Church._

 

“Can you at least tell me where your brother _is?”_ James tries again.

Regulus does not answer for a while. In fact, James has already given up on the question when he finally hears him utter ever so faintly.

“Teddington.”

 

***

 

Regulus doesn’t move so much as an inch from his position for the next hour. He’d apparently grown sick of staring out the window at one point - after all, there are only suburban houses and trimmed trees to stare at - that he’s started to wave his wand in the air in funny patterns. Once or twice, sparks had flown from it, and the entire room had pulsed for a few seconds in an uncomfortable heat.

“Erm. So.”

No answer.

“Regulus.”

Regulus’s wand-tip does a little flick.

“I’m - uh - James Potter.”

Regulus snorts.

“I figure you already knew that,” James backtracks.

“Well, I’d have to be pretty thick to have not caught that name every time Sirius mentioned it, haven’t I?”

Despite himself, James feels a giddy happiness for a moment. _Has Sirius talked about him that much?_

“Oh - yeah - well, I guess so.” James says, all of a sudden sheepish. “Well, um - what do you aim to produce with your wand, anyway? Aren’t there better ways to pass the time?”

“You think?”

James peers out the hallway, noting that it’s deserted, and runs toward the housekeeping cupboard at the end of the hallway.

A minute later, he is safely back in the room, grinning from ear to ear at Regulus’s confounded expression.

“Hmm. I should remember how to charm these,” James says, twirling around two brooms in his hands. A twig snaps on one of them. Regulus looks at him in alarm.

 

***

 

“Looking good!” James bellows. “But you’ve got to twist it up a bit towards the end; otherwise you’ll have trouble pulling out of the dive!”

He watches Regulus try again. At least he tries to, but then a cool breeze blows around him and flutters his robes, and before he knows it, he’s plummeting through the air in a dive of his own.

The absence of gravity lets his heart soar freely out of his chest, the wind screaming and whipping against his ears in an intoxicating harmony. He’s screaming his lungs raw himself, and it feels so good that he can’t stop, that he’s taking a huge breath and then he’s screaming again, and again, until he pulls out and comes to a hover right beside Regulus and registers that face again - that face that says, _have you gone mad?_

“Well?” says Regulus.

“Huh?”

“How did I do this time?”

“Oh yeah - pretty good, I think - excellent!”

Regulus returns James’s grin with a glare.

“Were you even _looking_?”

 

***

 

Sirius is in the room when they come bursting inside, throwing their brooms down with a final _clank_ and collapsing on the bed side by side.

James heaves, combing a sweaty fringe off his forehead.

“Si. Padfoot. Missed you.”

His elbow still clutching at his stomach, he rolls himself up until he’s sat cross-legged on the bed, the _Prophet_ crumpled underneath him.

“Were you two _flying?”_

“Uh-huh. Bloody good flyer your brother is, Si. I had almost nothing to remark about his diving other than that it looked lousy.”

Regulus, still laid down on the bed, drives a knee into James’s shin.

“Oi! _”_

Sirius’s eyebrow arches, going even higher than usual. Fucking eyebrow skills. What a pair of pretentious brothers.

“Reg, you’re absolutely filthy. Go in the shower right now.”

Regulus leaves grumpily, and Sirius immediately waves his wand to re-make the bed.

“My parents got their memories back.”

“That’s great. Really.” Sirius offers a genuine smile.

The sheets shift unforgivingly beneath James’s butt. The _Prophet_ makes an abrupt escape.

“Si… I read what happened… I’m -“

“Sorry, I know. Doesn’t change much, does it?”

James twists his lips, unsure.

Sirius hooks his robes on a peg, his back turned against James.

“He lived with him, you know. Regulus. He lived with Alphard.”

James didn’t know. “Oh.”

“Ever since he graduated. He didn’t… I didn’t know until today.”

Sirius has taken off his sweater now, starting to fold it in half. “He never told me he ran off, too, just like I did summer before sixth. Alphard was looking after him the whole time.”

“This morning, when it happened…”

“Regulus was on a mission. Alphard… well, he was at home, obviously.” Sirius’s tone does not waver one bit. James would think he really does not feel anything, that all of this has really not affected him at all, if not for the fact that Sirius is flattening his sweater and re-folding it for the third time.

“Regulus doesn’t have a place anymore, so I told him to come here. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course I don’t,” James says. “We flew today. I bewitched the brooms in the cupboard.”

“I saw.”

“I meant it, you know, Reg’s a pretty decent flyer.”

“ _Reg?_ ”

Sirius looks at him sideways, his fingers halted on the sweater as his eyebrow raises itself once again.

“What? You call him Reg all the time.”

Sirius blinks at him in disbelief.

 

***

 

And ever since, the motel room for two has been transformed into a room for three, a sleeping bag tucked in a corner by the window.

James is pleasantly surprised at the rate in which Regulus seems to be thawing to him. James had always thought of him as stubborn, difficult, and altogether immature, but these days he realizes that all of these assumptions were unfairly coming from Sirius. Now that he is offering Regulus a chance - not that he has any choice - he catches Regulus smirking more frequently at more and more of James’s dumb jokes and general everyday blunders. While Sirius was still out on his mission, he even took Regulus to introduce to his parents. After a bout of initial confusion, they had been highly delighted to have yet another ‘son’ to look after. Regulus, although pink-faced and quiet in the ward, would not cease his questions about the Potters after they got back.

_What did Mr. Potter do for work?_

_How many house elves did they have?_

_Exactly where was the summer house they had invited him to?_

James realizes, belatedly, that his family must be ridiculously alien to someone like Regulus, who had grown up under strict expectations and all-out abuse. It makes him feel a bit sad, so he compensates by exaggerating his responses.

_Oh yeah - the summer house - it’s right by the ocean, you see -_

It’s a lake.

_And there’s, like, ten guest rooms -_

There are two.

_So we can invite loads of people at once and have a massive Quidditch tournament in the backyard -_

It doesn’t have a backyard.

Dumbledore only sporadically directs James to missions. James is grateful that he seems to know that James might want to spend some time with his parents for a while. Then again, he might also know about Regulus, whom he might presume needs some company for the time being. It sometimes freaks James out that Dumbledore seems to know everything, that he’s the only person who can keep his head above his shit at times like these.

Regulus, too, seems to not have been having many responsibilities ever since Alphard happened. He stays dormant in the room, reading muggle novels he’s borrowed from the reception, apart from when James takes him out to go flying. They talk somewhat, but naturally, their conversations gravitate to James talking about his life and Regulus listening. James doesn’t know exactly where to start asking Regulus stuff, still scared that he might poke at a sore spot or something. Regulus doesn’t seem to mind just listening, anyway.

“I like talking to you, Reg. You can hold back sarcastic comments when you’re supposed to.”

“Are you comparing me with Sirius?”

“Who wouldn’t?”

Regulus rolls his eyes.

“You kind of look alike, too, you know? Only, you’re more…”

“What?”

“Average-looking.”

Regulus tackles him.

“What have you been telling Reg?” Sirius asks suspiciously one night, long after Regulus has curled up in his sleeping bag. “He’s convinced that your parents’ place by the pond is a fucking manor or something.”

“It’s not a _pond,_ alright, it’s a _lake -“_

“Are you really going to let him stay there?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“What?”

James thinks he sees the corner of Sirius’s mouth twitch, but then the conversation is back to all things practical again.

“I talked to Andromeda. She says she’ll take Regulus with her.

“Oh. That’s good, then?”

James can’t help but feel a _bit_ sad - he has frankly been enjoying having something close to a brother for once.

“Yeah. He’ll be safer with her. Her house has all kinds of ancient protective enchantments, and - I mean, she’s living in a proper _house,_ in the first place.”

The qualities of Andromeda’s living quarters aside, James knows what Sirius is really thinking about is the responsibility of looking after his brother. Both of them can barely sustain themselves - skipping breakfast, having takeout every dinner - that it’s safe to assume they couldn’t possibly provide a decent home for someone _else_.

“What does Reg say about it?”

Sirius shrugs dismissively. “Haven’t talked to him yet.”

 

***

 

Saturday morning comes all too soon. Andromeda will be at the funeral, and it will already be goodbye to Regulus and their carefree afternoon flying sessions over the Thames.

The room feels a tad somber, and James feels an inexplicable need to leave the brothers alone for a few minutes. He scurries into the shower, even as his body is crispy clean from one he took just last night. Without much to do, he settles for a good wank.

He realizes it has been over a full week since he last had sex with Sirius - that is, _properly,_ when James was _not_ drunk and definitely _not_ trying to take advantage of him. He feels his body longing for it, his heart yearning for it, in a heat that’s just a notch stronger than the hot shower that’s pouring onto him right now, and he simply lets himself soak in the all-too-vivid memories of Sirius’s smooth-pale skin beneath his hands, his ragged moans recurrently stuttering out James’s name.

He scrambles for a bar of soap, lathering it generously over his palms before chucking it back in its place. It’s almost as if he can hear Sirius saying stuff into his ear, insulting stuff, dirty stuff. _You’re so eager, Jamie…_ The accompanying nasty little laugh that’s frankly more arousing than James would like to admit. _Look at you, so desperate for me._

James moans, quietly enough that it would safely drown itself in the rushing water. Sirius’s hand replaces his own around his cock, stroking and twisting and rubbing in exactly the way that makes James squirm, shiver, whine.

In a frenzy, he jacks up the shower some more, just to be extra safe. His vision blurring over with fantasy, his eyes slip shut and Sirius’s hand speeds up.

“Sirius -“

_That’s it, James._

James muffles a final whine and comes. His lip caught painfully between his teeth and his head tossed back, forcing it to make it last as long as possible. His eyes squeezing against the overpowering water pressure.

Then, he opens them.

Unquestionably _not_ part of his fantasy, Sirius’s face peeks at him through a gap in the curtain.

James yelps, his hand on his cock electrocuted. 

“What the fuck!”

James scrabbles for the tap and shuts the water off.

“We’re leaving soon,” Sirius says, faux-nonchalantly. “You should get ready.”

James squints at him warily, heart still beating fast. Sirius’s stares back, eyes curiously dark.

“Hope I didn’t interrupt.”

James had nearly forgotten how Sirius could smirk like _that_ , so demeaning and humiliating and yet hiding a spark of a challenge at the same time, and he can only wait for Sirius to pop back out before he’s squirming all over himself again, only half in embarrassment.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
